"The experiment is to be tried, whether the children of the people,
the children of the whole people, can be educated; and whether an institution
of the highest grade, can be successfully controlled by the popular will, not
by the privileged few."

Dr. Horace Webster, first president
of the Free Academy (later City College)

TRUSTEES' PROPOSAL to Eliminate
Remedial Courses at the
Senior Colleges

Remediation Is An Integral
Part of Higher Education

The Quality of Remedial
Programs

The Numbers Game: Impact
on Students

Analysis of CUNY Projections
of Impact

An Alternative Assessment
of the Amendment's Impact

Impact on Students
at Particular Colleges

Racial and Economic
Stratification

Educational Impact: Focus
on What Really Matters

Impact on SEEK and
ESL Students: A Prelude to Failure?

A Word About the Community
Colleges

The Likelihood of Completing
a Bachelor's Degree
When
Beginning at a Community College

The Benefits of Taking
Remediation at a Senior College

Impact on Colleges' Institutional
Missions

The Problem of Inflexibility

Impact at the College
of Staten Island

The Budgetary Impact
of Relocating Remediation

Attempts to Mitigate the
Adverse Effects of the New Policy

Prelude to Success

CUNY-Based Summer Programs

CUNY-Based Year-Round
Immersion Programs

College Now

Other CUNY Initiatives

Other Ameliorative
Proposals: Paying for Remediation

The Tests - Remediation and
Admissions - A "Moving Target"

Use of a Test as a
Sole Criterion for a High Stakes Decision

Fairness and Standardized
Tests

Realistic Cut Scores

CONCLUSIONS and RECOMMENDATIONS
on Remediation

Appendix A: Legal Analysis
and Standard of Review

Appendix B: Measures of Excellence

Appendix C: Exhibits

Bibliography

INTRODUCTION

Background

The City University of New York ("CUNY") has a long and proud history.
The third largest university system in the country, CUNY enrolls nearly
144,000 students in its 11 senior colleges and approximately 69,000 students
in its six community colleges. Traditionally, CUNY has demonstrated a strong
commitment to serving a diverse and non-traditional urban constituency
that includes large numbers of working students, recent immigrants, single
mothers, and adult learners. Because CUNY has found ways to accommodate
these students' needs, it has emerged as a vehicle for the upward mobility
of the disadvantaged in the City of New York. The system's significance
in training the City's professional workforce makes it essential to the
economy of one of the world's most important cities.

CUNY's importance to the lives of individual New Yorkers cannot be overestimated.
Fifty-three percent of CUNY students are first-generation college students;
twenty-eight percent are the first in their immediate family to attend
college. The boost CUNY gives these students is difficult to quantify,
but studies have repeatedly shown that higher education increases the earning
capacity, productivity and entrepreneurial ability of New Yorkers. Current
census data indicate that having a bachelor's degree increases a person's
average lifetime earnings by about $700,000, compared to having only a
high school diploma. Post-secondary education is also a major service industry
in New York City. CUNY's direct impact on New York's economy and tax base
is estimated to be $13.7 billion annually.[1]

CUNY is at a turning point. The system is the focus of controversy and
its funding is grossly inadequate. External controversy and internal schisms
have been exacerbated by the recent proposal by the CUNY Board of Trustees
to eliminate remedial coursework at CUNY's senior colleges.[2]
Against this background, the Mayor's Advisory Task Force on the City University
of New York, headed by Benno Schmidt, (now a Trustee of CUNY and Vice Chairman
of the Board) issued its Report, The City University of New York: An
Institution Adrift, (the "Schmidt Report") on June 7, 1999. Herman
Badillo, now Chairman of the Board of Trustees of CUNY, was also a member
of the Mayor's Task Force. The Report was accompanied by a number of underlying
reports, some written by Task Force staff and some by consultants from
the Rand Corporation and PricewaterhouseCoopers.[3]
Most recently, on September 30, 1999, the group of consultants engaged
by the Board of Regents issued its Review ("Consultants' Review") of CUNY's
proposal to end remedial coursework at the senior colleges.

The Role of the Commission
on the Future of CUNY

The Association of the Bar of the City of New York believes that it can
serve a constructive role in the public policy debate over CUNY. Over the
course of its 129-year history, the Association has developed a reputation
for providing broad, comprehensive, in-depth and non-partisan analysis
of major policy issues. The Association has applied this approach to topics
as varied as development of a Congressional code of ethics, creation of
the City's first Family Court, strategic arms control and, currently, campaign
finance reform. To accomplish its goal, the Association has established
a Commission on the Future of CUNY.[4]
The Commission consists of eminent educators, former public officials,
lawyers, as well as business, civic and community leaders representing
a balance of perspectives. Commission's members include past and present
members of the CUNY community.

The Commission takes its lead from CUNY's mission as enunciated in its
enabling statute. Pursuant to New York Education Law,[5]
CUNY is obligated to provide broad access and opportunity for students
from all backgrounds, to maintain a commitment to academic excellence,
to remain responsive to the needs of its urban constituencies and to operate
an integrated educational system that fosters student access to all system
resources. Within that framework the Commission has examined the issues
concerning the future of CUNY.

Over the past two years, CUNY has been the focal point of a vigorous debate
over its standards and its remediation and admissions policies. The proposal
to eliminate remedial coursework at the senior colleges has been accompanied
by a high degree of rhetoric, creating tension among CUNY faculty, administrators
and students, as well as civic and government leaders. In the course of
the debate, the public has been led to believe that the senior colleges
are filled with students who are unable to read or write.[6]
As the Consultants' Review noted:

the process of considering the strategic strengthening of the University
has given way to an invasive political theater in which outrageous claims
are the norm, policy comes to reflect anecdote rather than analysis, and
almost everyone is free to talk without restraint -- about lines drawn
in the sand, about the fundamental negation of the institution's basic
mission, about an institution being adrift.[7]

At this moment, as the New York State Board of Regents considers the Trustees'
proposed Amendment and the CUNY Board of Trustees continues to redefine
the system's methods of testing, assessment, and admissions, the proper
role of remediation in the CUNY system is the most immediate question facing
the system. It is only fitting, then, that the Commission should turn its
attention, first, to the proposed Amendment to the Master Plan. It will
be the primary focus of Part I of this Report. Part II (to be issued at
a later date) will focus its recommendations for the future of CUNY on
the two aspects of the system we view as primarily responsible for setting
it "adrift": chronic under-funding and flawed governance practices.

Governance problems are legion. For example: Because of the system of appointment
of Trustees and absence of conflict of interest rules to prevent either
the fact or the appearance of political interference in the making of educational
policy decisions, these decisions may be considered suspect. The decision-making
process in the case of the changes in remediation and access is particularly
vulnerable to criticism for its haste and the absence of careful deliberation
or any meaningful consideration of less drastic alternatives than the one
adopted. Courts have overturned Trustee decisions because of their failure
to follow applicable procedures. This in turn has led to further confusion
on the part of both the colleges and their prospective students.

The lack of sufficient financial support is another constant theme. CUNY
is in a precarious position financially and it can hardly be gainsaid that
it is grossly underfunded. Its state appropriations have dropped by 40%
since 1980 in constant dollars, and its City funding has plunged 90% in
constant dollars.[8]
Meanwhile, costs have increased for the system, forcing it to rely more
and more on tuition revenues to stay afloat. As a result, tuition levels
at CUNY are currently significantly higher than at peer colleges.[9]
New York State funding for the operating costs of public higher education
is almost at the bottom of the national scale.[10]
Since 1990, New York State's constant dollar appropriation for CUNY community
colleges has fallen by 55%, while enrollments have remained constant. State
funding now makes up just 34% of community college budgets.[11]
Meanwhile, the state legislature and courts have recently reduced New York
City's responsibility for CUNY appropriations.

In an effort to be of greater assistance to the Board of Regents in making
the decision whether to approve the Amendment, we have prepared a brief
analysis of controlling law and the standard of review to be applied by
the Regents in determining whether to approve the proposed Amendment to
the Master Plan. (See Appendix A.) Suffice it to say here, the Trustees'
Resolution and proposed Amendments are, by statute, only recommendations
to the Regents. The Regents have the responsibility to assure that the
changes comport with the mission of CUNY to serve its urban constituency
and to maintain academic excellence. In their consideration, the Regents
may take into account that the Board of Trustees neither discussed nor
debated the potential impact that the proposals would have, nor did they
have the necessary documentation before them when they acted. Moreover,
the Trustees ignored their own by-laws, which require that the faculty
be involved in the formulation of policy relating to admissions and changes
in curriculum (8.6). Further, the Regents must take into account the implications
of the federal Civil Rights laws.

Somehow in this discussion, the provision of remedial coursework has been
equated with a diminution in academic excellence. Whether or not the provision
of remediation relates to academic excellence is a debatable issue. Remedial
coursework at CUNY senior colleges at present must be satisfied within
one or at most two semesters. Academic excellence, on the other hand, involves
the provision of faculty, scholarly research, and facilities to enrich
and develop students over the period from admission to graduation. CUNY's
great successes in this area have been overlooked in this debate. (See
Appendix B.)

Excellence should be measured by the achievements of the graduates
of an institution not by its entrants -- an excellent university
with CUNY's mission should raise the levels of achievement. It is
relatively easy to take high-achieving incoming students and then graduate
them with high achievement. It is much more difficult, but also important,
to take students who are ill-prepared and to graduate them with high levels
of achievement. This has been CUNY's unique contribution to this city.

CUNY is far too important to the future of this City and its residents,
particularly the poor and poorly served, to "rush to judgement" on such
vital matters as continued access for the City's economically and educationally
disadvantaged to what is likely the only chance they will have to get an
education and thereby to gain a toehold in the economy of the twenty-first
century. The Commission finds the expressed need to move quickly extremely
disturbing and can discern no need for such great, even unseemly, haste
in making whatever changes may ultimately be deemed advisable. The future
students of CUNY are entitled to have the same opportunity of social and
economic upward mobility afforded to their counterparts in earlier generations
of "the children of the whole people" of New York.

These are difficult issues. Broad vision, clear and objective information,
meaningful assessments of academic excellence and careful consensus-building
are needed in this debate, rather than polarized rhetoric and simplistic
solutions.

MAJOR FINDINGSof the COMMISSION on the FUTURE of CUNY: REMEDIATION

The Commission submits that
there are compelling reasons not to approve the proposed Amendment on remediation
in its current form and on the proposed timetable.

The proposed changes will
have an unacceptably disproportionate effect on those very low-income,
minority and immigrant groups who are most dependent on CUNY to provide
a leg up onto the economic ladder.

The proposed Amendment is
too rigid. In regard to remedial coursework, it does not allow for the
necessary flexibility and discretion at individual campuses having different
missions and appealing to the needs and interests of different segments
of the CUNY student population. We agree with the observation of the Consultants'
Review that one would expect that the natural complement
to such differentiation would be a practice of flexibility, in which individual
colleges would be allowed to develop their own pathways toward adopting
an integrated, more rigorous, set of standards...[rather than] a strong
centralized cast in which basic rules are being applied unilaterally and
everyone is expected to march to the beat of the same drummer.

Like the Regents' Consultants,
the Commission believes that an accurate understanding of the Amendment's
impact is necessary to a reasonable analysis of its merit. The Consultants'
Review premises its endorsement of the proposed Amendment on its acceptance
of the accuracy of CUNY's set of projections stating that only a relatively
small number of students will be impacted.

We, however, have questions
regarding the validity of CUNY's projections for the following reasons:

This number is based upon several
assumptions about improvements in readiness of future CUNY freshmen for
college work. These improvements may or may not materialize as envisioned
and their timing is uncertain.

CUNY has not yet made available
the data reflecting the effect of proposed changes on the racial and ethnic
makeup of incoming classes, the impact on particular colleges, and other
statistics vital to analysis.

CUNY projections of impact do
not reflect the students who may be most profoundly harmed by the policy:
the SEEK and ESL[14]
students who will be admitted to the senior colleges but denied remedial
courses which are very often needed in order to have a chance of success
in college.

The elimination of remedial
coursework will occur prior to the funding or implementation of programs
planned to mitigate its impact. Programs which are being planned or expanded
to help prepare high school graduates for the challenges of college life
are not yet fully developed or in place. Support services intended to replace
remedial coursework are neither in place nor funded. Questions regarding
the nature and the funding for such programs remain unanswered.

Elimination of remedial coursework
at the senior colleges should not be approved unless there is adequate
understanding of its impact. The consultants to the Regents recognize this
and have noted their concerns about its implementation (pp.7-8) and its
potential disproportionate impact on students from low socio-economic backgrounds
(p. 5). The Commission shares these concerns. But we cannot agree with
the endorsement of implementation of the first phase of the plan with a
"wait and see" approach to its impact. Reliable factual information is
first needed with respect to the success of various new programs and their
impact.

The Amendment is based on an
incomplete definition of excellence. Excellence should not be measured
only by the standardized test scores of incoming students, which are frequently
a reflection of their socio-economic status, but by the "value added" by
the process of higher education. A definition of excellence and standards
that focuses too heavily on the qualifications of incoming students is
especially inappropriate for a large urban university with a diverse student
body having diverse levels of preparation.

TRUSTEES' PROPOSAL to Eliminate
Remedial Courses

at the Senior Colleges

Admission standards at CUNY senior colleges[15]
are currently established separately by each of those colleges but centrally
administered by CUNY. Each school has a sliding scale using several variables:
high school grade point average, educational background (as measured by
the number of college preparatory courses on a student's high school transcript),
and SAT performance (though until now the SAT has not been required by
CUNY). Those standards have been pegged upward in recent years and in some
cases are as high as, or higher than, they were prior to the implementation
of open admission in 1970.[16]

Until the most recent change in policy on September 27, 1999, [17]
upon acceptance, students were given three placement tests -- the College
Skills Assessment Tests ("CSATs")[18]
-- to determine their proficiency in reading, writing and mathematics.
Students who failed one or more of these tests were placed in the appropriate
remedial courses. As we understand it, the new tests, currently scheduled
to be inaugurated in the Spring semester of the current (1999-2000) academic
year, will be used in the same way as the CSATs have been used in the past.

Concurrent with their remedial work, until now, students have been offered
full-credit coursework in other subjects and access to the college's full
resources. Since 1995 students have been required to complete their remedial
work in one or two semesters, depending on the college. There is not a
great difference in the graduation rate of CUNY students who enroll in
one or two remedial courses and their peers who required no remediation.
(The eight-year graduation rate for CUNY baccalaureate students who enrolled
in 1988 with no remedial needs was 48.2%; for students who took and passed
one remedial course, 44.9%; and for those who took and passed two remedial
courses, 41.4%[19]
). Students who enroll in one remedial course perform nearly as well as
other students in their remaining coursework.[20]

Under the proposed Amendment, which provides details for the January 1999
Board of Trustees resolution, all remedial coursework is to be phased out
of all the senior colleges by 2001. Analysis of the proposed Amendment
has proven to be surprisingly difficult given that it is based on a relatively
simple proposition, i.e., no more remedial courses at the senior
colleges. But interpretations, re-interpretations, exceptions, exemptions
and explications, as well as outright changes in the proposed policy have
continued unabated from the time the proposed Amendment was submitted to
the Board of Regents on July 1, 1999 through October and up to this writing.

We believe, however, that
this is how the proposed Amendment will work:

Senior college admissions criteria
will continue to be specified separately by each college within a minimum
set by the central administration and subject to its approval. Those standards
will be based upon a combination of high school grades, SAT scores, Regents
test scores, the number of college preparatory courses, and class rank.[21]
Admissions based on these factors, however, will in some cases be "conditional."
We do not know at this time what proportion of these preliminary acceptances
will ultimately be suspended. Nor do we know the proportions at various
colleges by race and ethnicity.

Some students may be exempted
from the requirement of taking placement tests --on the basis of SAT or
Regents test scores. The proposed Amendment set the threshold for this
exemption at 500 on the SAT Verbal and 500 on the SAT Math as cut off scores,
with the equivalent ACT scores, or a score of at least 75 on the relevant
Regents exams as alternative criteria. What "other admission criteria"
referred to in the Amendment might mean remains to be seen.

SEEK[23]
students, and ESL[24]
students educated abroad and not otherwise in need of remediation will
be admitted even if they are not exempt on the basis of the SAT or Regents.
Thus SEEK and ESL students will be admitted to the senior colleges regardless
of whether they are deemed to need remediation pursuant to these or any
other measures, but they will not be afforded any remedial courses.
In lieu of remedial courses, SEEK and ESL students will be required to
enroll in full course schedules and seek remediation on the side. CUNY
plans to seek funding for additional support services for these and other
students.[26]

Other than SEEK or ESL, students
who fail one or more placement tests even after a summer immersion program
will not be admitted to a baccalaureate program. If they "high fail" only
one placement test, they will be enrolled in a Prelude to Success program.[27]
Otherwise, their "conditional acceptance" will be revoked, and they will
be allowed to enroll in a community college rather than a senior college.

Although the Regents' consultants
speak of monitoring and modifying the phase-out of remedial courses, the
Amendment as written would require that remedial coursework in baccalaureate
programs be phased out according to the timetable's specifications. Changes,
if any, would be limited to adjustments in the Prelude to Success-type
programs, delivery of support services, and other ancillary matters.

Thus,
although the proposed Amendment and its preceding Trustees' Resolution
are nominally addressed largely to the issue of remediation, they are,
of course, very much concerned with admissions as well. Stated briefly,
the net effect of the resolution and the Amendment is: 1) to deny, or make
conditional, baccalaureate program admission to students who demonstrate
any level of skills deficiencies and need to complete remedial work, 2)
as a result, to raise significantly the bar for admissions at the senior
colleges to the exclusion of unknown numbers of students, and 3) to nevertheless
admit to senior college some students (SEEK and ESL) who may need remediation,
but to deny them remedial coursework. Since the national average combined
SAT score is 1017, the 500/500 SAT score exemption means that the practical
effect of the Amendment is that only students with above national average
SAT scores are presumptively eligible for CUNY senior colleges.[28]

Chancellor Goldstein stresses, as do the Regents' consultants, that the
proposal envisions the provision of various academic support services in
lieu of formal remedial coursework. Many supporters of the change believe
that it can lay "the foundation for a new emphasis on quality" and that
it is "the natural outgrowth of a set of policies ... aimed at raising
standards for baccalaureate degree students." [30] This approach
to raising standards is based, at least in part, on the observation that
the presence of less prepared students in classes with better prepared
students pulls down the standards of instruction as the teacher is forced
to aim to the lowest common denominator.

This is a problem, which is frequently identified by faculty and students
alike, and is, of course, not unique to CUNY or to institutions having
students who need remedial coursework. Schools which deal with students
with a range of abilities and preparation have tried difference approaches.
The Brooklyn College SEEK program uses block programming for students with
similar remedial needs. (See below, p. 22) The experience of the
College of Staten Island, (See below, p. 49) is instructive in this
regard. Other creative solutions might be tried at other campuses if they
are giving the flexibility to experiment.

But, this Amendment proposes a profound change in the structure, availability,
and organization of remedial education at CUNY. While its stated intentions
are similar to those embodied in several recent initiatives undertaken
by the University or by some of its individual campuses, it is different
in kind from the earlier innovations in several important respects.

First, it allows the central administration to set standards unilaterally.
Like the April, 1992 College Preparatory Initiative ("CPI"), the proposed
Amendment aims to improve the skills background of students entering into
the CUNY system before they enroll. The CPI was a constructive and collaborative
undertaking that paired CUNY faculty and administrators with peers in the
New York City Public Schools to jointly evaluate course offerings in the
public schools, formulate standards, and develop strategies to help students
meet them.[31]
The Amendment, however, sets standards by fiat, and denies admission to
those students who fail to meet them.

Second, like the policies contained in the June, 1995 University Budget
Planning and Policy Options, the Amendment is an attempt to minimize
the responsibility for remediation at CUNY's senior colleges. These 1995
policies limited remedial and ESL offerings at senior colleges to one year,
allowed senior colleges to further limit remedial coursework to one semester,
and prohibited senior college students who had twice failed remedial or
ESL courses from repeating the course in question. The Amendment, on the
other hand, takes ultimate control over admissions standards and remedial
curricula from the senior colleges, and prohibits almost all students with
shortcomings in basic skills from enrolling at the senior college level.

Finally, several college-level initiatives, such as Baruch's policy on
remediation,[32]
the tightening of admissions standards at several senior colleges, and
the development of block programs for entering freshmen with and without
remedial needs, have made strides toward improving standards and educational
quality at CUNY -- for students who are well prepared for college and those
who have educational shortcomings alike. These policies, however, were
initiated and developed by the particular colleges, not by the CUNY Board
or administration. They were allowed to evolve independent of any system-wide
requirements. These reforms were not formulated to prepare the system for
the elimination of remedial coursework; in that respect, the Trustees'
Amendment does not flow naturally from them.

The Amendment takes much of the responsibility and power to make reforms
from CUNY's colleges, undermining the college-level efforts that have come
before and limiting opportunities for many incoming students to demonstrate
and improve their abilities. In a public multi-campus system like CUNY
-- particularly in a system subject to powerful political influences and
serving a distinctive, diverse, and urban constituency -- these governance
distinctions are crucial.

The Commission is also profoundly concerned about the timing of the changes.
Improvements envisioned by the new Regents' exam requirements have not
yet been fully realized and their ultimate extent is unknown, particularly
for New York City high school students. The academic support services envisioned
by the Amendment and CUNY's budget requests have not yet been funded or
put into place. The recent debacle in the New York City public schools,
where there was an effort to raise the standards of promotion without careful
implementation of critical steps such as the administration of tests, shows
the damage that can occur when well-intentioned programs are implemented
without adequate preparation. With respect to the elimination of remedial
coursework at senior colleges, Florida, the sole university system in the
country to have already implemented such a program, did so gradually over
a period of more than 15 years after the passage of the enabling legislation.[33]
It should also be noted that Florida's remedial education model differs
substantially from the model CUNY has proposed.[34]

Remediation Is An Integral
Part of Higher Education

The need to help under-prepared students -- commonly referred to as remediation
-- has been an integral part of higher education in this country for over
300 years. As we have moved from an industrial to a highly technical and
service oriented economy, higher education continues to educate an ever
growing proportion of the population. Particularly in areas such as New
York City, where there have been problems in the public school system which
feeds the University and high numbers of immigrants from a wide range of
educational backgrounds, there is every reason to believe that remediation
will continue to be necessary.

The debate on elevating academic standards in CUNY senior colleges has
focused almost exclusively on the elimination of remedial coursework as
if that would be the panacea. Academic excellence, of course, is related
to the ability of incoming students. But remedial courses at CUNY senior
colleges must be completed within one or at most two semesters. Indeed,
CUNY students who now require some level of remediation have already met
the regular admission requirements which in some cases are as high or higher
than they were prior to the implementation of open admissions in 1970.

Academic excellence is judged by a broader set of criteria than the grade
scores of students upon entry into college. It is measured by the full
sweep of resources provided by the institution, including the reputation
of the faculty, the number of full time professors as compared to adjuncts,
the ratio of faculty to students, libraries, computers and the vast basket
of services expected to be provided by top quality universities. The perception
that eliminating remedial coursework will directly elevate academic excellence
undoubtedly has made it an easy target for those looking for quick fixes
to an educational system that has come under serious fire. But the victims
of these changes will be in any case the students who have been denied
the proper preparation in the public school system. Students who have done
well enough to satisfy admissions standards for many public baccalaureate
programs in the country will have an inflexible barricade placed before
them in their quest to advance in society.

The Quality of Remedial
Programs

Undoubtedly, some institutions do a better job than
others of preparing students for baccalaureate programs even apart from
financial resources and other benefits less easily quantified. The Schmidt
Report criticized CUNY for failure to keep sufficient data to make any
adequate conclusions about which of its remedial programs are effective
and which are not, either at the senior or the community colleges:

CUNY has made little effort to determine which approaches work well or
badly for particular student populations. Neither we nor CUNY knows whether
and how many remediation students are in fact mastering basic academic
skills sufficient for college readiness. Moreover, there has been little
analysis to determine which of CUNY's various institutions and programs
are best suited to provide which types of remediation, based on their academic
mission and their track records. Remediation is an obvious case for a coherent
system to commit itself to careful institutional mission differentiation,
based on which institutions and programs succeed and are most productive,
and which institutions and faculties should be given responsibility and
support. The information that does exist tends to be anecdotal or unreliable.[35]

Thus it is entirely possible that the automatic removal of all remedial
coursework from the senior colleges will result in the abandonment of some
of the most creative and successful programs along with some which may
be failures. The Brooklyn College SEEK program, for example, received a
Fund for the Improvement of Post Secondary Education ("FIPSE") grant in
1995 for curriculum improvement and faculty development to better prepare
disadvantaged, remedial students for Brooklyn's core curriculum. This program
includes classroom instruction as well as counseling, tutoring, etc. Remedial
classes are taught in blocks along with related courses in the College's
core curriculum, and this approach has had notable success.[36]
In 1999, on the strength of its students' skills improvements, Brooklyn's
SEEK program received a second FIPSE grant -- to replicate its pedagogical
model at Queens College and John Jay College.[37]
Under the proposed Amendment, Brooklyn College will no longer be able to
offer the remedial classes.

The Numbers Game:
Impact on Students

It is a disservice to CUNY, the students it serves, and the City of New
York to allow debates over projections and statistics to replace a reasoned
discussion of the pedagogical and policy merits of the proposed Amendment.
As the Regents' consultants explain, "the push-pull of a conflict in which
one group says thousands of students will be affected while others project
less than 200 students will be affected is an exercise in numbers and not
in learning." [38]

At the same time, one must understand the Amendment's scale to judge it.
If the Amendment did, as some argue, affect just 152 students a year, then
the reasons to block its implementation are less powerful, though by no
means without merit. The fact is, however, that its impact is likely to
be much broader.

Analysis of CUNY Projections
of Impact

Projecting policy impact is, even in the best case,
largely a matter of educated guesswork. In the case of the recent Trustees'
Amendment, the effort is made even more difficult by gaps in the available
data and shifting interpretations of the policy. During the debate over
the proposed Amendment, CUNY has issued no fewer than four different projections
of its impact on enrolling students: In response to the Trustees' original
resolution to eliminate remedial courses, the central administration circulated
a report in May, 1998 that outlined a "worse case scenario," in which the
elimination at the senior college level would force 46% of CUNY's senior
college bachelor's entrants into community colleges.[39]
The text of the Amendment, however, revised that estimate, maintaining
that "approximately 10% of students will complete their remediation at
a community college."[40] In response to a request by the Board
of Regents for more detailed projections, CUNY's Office of Institutional
Research projected this July that the Amendment would send just 220 students
to community colleges for remediation.[41]
Even more recently, that projection has again been revised, and CUNY maintains
that the Amendment will send just 152 senior college students to community
colleges.[42]
CUNY now argues that its most recent projection is the most accurate.[43]

TABLE 1: Four CUNY Projections of the Proposed Amendment's Impact on
Senior College Enrollment, by Percent and Number of Students.

Date

Source

Impact (%)

Impact (#)

June 3, 1998

CUNY Administration

46%

6717

June 28, 1999

Board of Trustees
Amendment

10%

1460

July 4, 1999

CUNY Office
of Institutional Research

1.5%

220*

September 1, 1999

CUNY Office
of Institutional Research

1.0%

152*

*projections exclude students bound for Prelude to Success or
year-round immersion programs.

It is important, then, to take a careful look at the assumptions and methods
that underlie this most recent projection. This projection, dated September
1, 1999 and attached hereto as Appendix C, Exhibit 2 attempts to predict
the Amendment's impact on the Fall, 2000 class of entering first-time freshmen.

Two elements of the projection's
construction limit its effectiveness:

First, it implies that the only students affected by the Amendment are
those who are sent to community college after having gained senior college
acceptance. This implication, which is embedded in the document's flow-chart
movement from "projected successful first-time freshman Fall applicants
to CUNY senior colleges" to "remediation at a community college", is incomplete.
Students accepted to senior colleges but then required to transfer enrollment
to a community college for remedial courses -- the 152 students in CUNY's
revised projection -- will be affected by the resolution, but they are
not the only ones: SEEK and ESL students allowed to enroll in senior college
will be denied remedial coursework that is imperative to their successful
college careers. Students placed into the pilot Prelude to Success and
proposed year-round immersion programs will certainly feel the Amendment's
impact as well. (For a discussion of Prelude to Success, see pp.
56, et seq.)

Second, the projection appears to make implausible assumptions about the
improvement in entering student preparedness. As of the start of the Fall
1998 semester, 56.2% of incoming first-time freshmen to CUNY bachelor's
programs had passed all three CSAT's. CUNY's most recent projection of
the Amendment's impact assumes that 84.6% of its incoming non-SEEK and
non-ESL students will have satisfied the system's remedial requirements
by the start of the Fall 2000 semester. This is an improvement of 28.4%
in just two years. To explain this marked improvement, CUNY officials speak
of increased recruitment efforts, the introduction of SAT and Regents'
exam exemptions from remediation, an upward trend in student preparedness,
improved performance in summer immersion programs, and the introduction
of new, more accurate, assessment measures. These improvements, however,
are only projected. In implementing the Amendment, CUNY should be prepared
for the distinct possibility that the projected improvement in student
preparedness may not materialize. And in considering the Amendment, all
parties involved should be aware of the Amendment's potential impact if
these projected gains in student preparedness do not materialize.

An Alternative Assessment
of the Amendment's Impact

Fortunately, the shortcomings in CUNY's most recent projection are relatively
easy to remedy. To avoid the implication that SEEK and ESL student are
untouched by the Amendment, one simply has to count their numbers among
those impacted. And to project more realistically incoming student preparedness,
one can replace CUNY's projected pass rate with the rate at which CUNY
students passed out of remedial courses before the beginning of the Fall
1998 semester, the most recent semester for which complete and reliable
figures have been made available outside of CUNY. Table 2 makes these two
corrections to CUNY's most recent projection.

TABLE 2: Impact of the
Trustees' Amendment, had it been implemented Fall 1998

We believe that Table
2 more realistically projects the Amendment's impact. This diagram relies
exclusively on the experience of CUNY's Fall 1998 entering freshman cohort.[44]
These numbers differ substantially from the numbers presented in CUNY's
most recent projection of the Amendment's impact in several regards: Where
CUNY predicts a significant increase in first-time freshmen enrollments,
our projection starts with actual 1998 enrollments. Rather than relying
on CUNY's projected decrease in SEEK student enrollment for which no explanation
is offered, we used 1998 enrollments as a baseline. In place of CUNY's
estimate of students who will pass the CSAT's on the first attempt[45]
or will be exempt by virtue of their SAT or Regents scores we substituted
the Fall 1998 incoming CUNY student CSAT pass rate. Rather than accepting
CUNY's assumption of increased enrollment and success rates in summer immersion
programs, we used the historical data. Finally, CUNY's most recent projection
assigns some of the students who still have remedial needs at the beginning
of the fall semester to year-round immersion programs. Such programs are
not mandated by the proposed Amendment and do not yet exist anywhere in
the CUNY system. We have no way of knowing whether or not they will exist
by the time the proposed Amendment is implemented.

The Commission recognizes the possibility that incoming CUNY student performance
may improve by the Fall 2000 semester and we hope that it will be as dramatic
as CUNY suggests.[46]
We find it unlikely, however, that it will improve as considerably as CUNY
assumes it will, especially if the system is to enjoy the sort of enrollment
growth that it projects over the next two years. We also believe that our
figures provide a realistic and reliable, if not optimistic, projection
of the Amendment's impact. If CUNY's June 3, 1998 projection was a worse-case
scenario and its September 1, 1999 projection is a best-case scenario,
we intend ours to be a likely-case scenario.

Impact on Students at
Particular Colleges

Because all of the projections circulated to date,
including our own, are system-wide, they miss the Amendment's potential
effect on individual senior colleges. This is an important oversight for
two reasons: First, rapid changes in enrollment can have deleterious effects
on college budgets and operations. Second, remedial courses and remedial
needs are not spread equally throughout CUNY. For some of CUNY's senior
colleges, implementing the proposed Amendment will require relatively minor
adjustments; for others, the Amendment represents a sudden change that
could be very harmful to their long term health and to their traditional
student bodies.

In light of the projected losses in incoming student populations, it should
come as no surprise that CUNY is projecting declining undergraduate enrollments
at several of its senior colleges between Fall 1998 and Fall 2003: Baruch,
Brooklyn, City, Lehman, Queens, and York.[47]
For some CUNY institutions, declines in enrollment could be dire. In preparing
the Amendment to the Master Plan, CUNY asked each of its institutions to
project the Amendment's impact on their enrollments. Brooklyn College predicted
an 11.8% decline in incoming freshman, City College predicted an initial
drop of as much as 33% in new students, and Lehman predicted a cumulative
drop in undergraduate enrollment of 31.1% by the 2003-2004 school year.[48]

Given the uncertainty of enrollment projections for the senior colleges,
the impact of these changes on the senior colleges could be severe. On
top of that, the senior colleges will be expected to absorb the costs of
many student services for students enrolled in Prelude to Success programs
on their campuses even though their FTE allotments will be going to the
community colleges where they are officially registered.

Racial and Economic Stratification

Another of the Amendment's implications necessarily
overlooked in system-wide projections is its disparate impact on low income
and minority students. According to CUNY's Office of Institutional Research
and Analysis, 85% of remedial students at the bachelor's level and 80%
of remedial students at the associate's level are racial and ethnic minorities.
Further, the mean family income for entering non-remedial students is $13,000
higher than for entering remedial students at the bachelor's level.[49]
It is clear, then, that the Amendment will be more likely to affect the
educational careers of low income and minority students. Indeed, while
the Amendment itself never addresses its potential effect on minority enrollments,
the statistical appendices attached to the Amendment predict a sizeable
decline in minority enrollments at the senior college level over the next
five years, while enrollments of white students remain relatively constant.[50]

Further, it is important to note the correlation between institutions most
affected by the Amendment and those with the largest proportion of racial
and ethnic minority students. As Table 4 indicates, three senior colleges
are likely to be particularly profoundly impacted by the proposed Amendment:
City College, Lehman, and York. First-time freshmen at these three schools
have been considerably more likely to fail the CSAT's than their peers
at Baruch, Brooklyn, Hunter, and Queens. At the same time, City, Lehman
and York have considerably higher proportions of students of color than
Baruch, Brooklyn, Hunter, and Queens. It is disturbing to consider the
fate of City, Lehman, and York under the proposed Amendment. Either these
schools with particularly large minority populations will shrink substantially
under the pressure of rising admissions standards, or their student compositions
will change dramatically as students of color and low income students seek
further education at community colleges, or perhaps not at all.

As Table 5 indicates, minority students are considerably
more likely to require remediation. Black, Hispanic, and Asian students
are dramatically over-represented in CUNY's remedial classrooms and SEEK
programs. It seems overwhelmingly likely, then, that the Trustees' Amendment
will disproportionately impact CUNY's minority population. It is difficult
to see how CUNY will be able to maintain its commitment to serving a diverse
urban population and providing access to the disenfranchised under a policy
likely to have a particularly adverse impact on poor and minority students.

The discussion of numerical impact obscures the effect
that the proposed Amendment will have on good educational practices and
the provision of a quality education to CUNY students. The proposal is
inherently inflexible in its insistence on a "one size fits all" approach
to implementation and the Trustees seem intent on rushing it into operation
before properly assessing its full impact, studying the efficacy of those
programs intended to ameliorate that impact, or identifying and validating
new selection devices that are to be an integral part of it. The Commission
has identified a number of aspects of the proposal that significantly undermine
its credibility.

Impact on SEEK and ESL Students: A Prelude to Failure?

Up to this point the public debate has focused on
the impact on the students who will be turned away from the senior colleges
as a result of the proposed Amendment. But we should also consider what
might happen to the exceptions to the rule, i.e., SEEK and ESL students.
Although these students will continue to be admitted to the senior colleges,
it will no longer be permissible to give them remedial classes on the senior
college campuses during the academic year. At Baruch College in the recent
past, such students, as well as others needing remediation despite meeting
the relatively high admissions standards, were given tutoring in the basics
at the same time that they took their regular college level courses. But
Baruch has comparatively few such students, and Baruch has a privately
funded tutoring center available for all their students in need of such
services.[51]
What will happen to the much larger number of SEEK and ESL students who
have traditionally attended Brooklyn, City, Lehman, and other senior colleges
that may not have the resources to give individual or even small group
tutoring? Will they be tossed into the deep waters of the college curriculum
to sink or swim? Or will CUNY be able to make available the kinds of academic
support which would allow them to prosper?

SEEK, in particular, is a legislatively mandated program.[52]
Denying these students the remedial courses they need subverts the legislative
intent of the program and will effectively read it out of existence. CUNY
officials have talked a great deal about their Prelude to Success program.
It would give remedial coursework under the auspices of a community college
to regularly admitted senior college students who need some remediation.
Their brother and sister students who are considered economically and educationally
disadvantaged, or who are immigrants with limited facility in English,
however, will not have the benefit of any remedial coursework under the
proposal as it is currently conceived. That, we suggest, is a likely "prelude
to failure."

As for ESL, we must be frank in stating that we do not understand how the
ESL exception will work in practice. It is unclear to us whether students
admitted to baccalaureate programs under this exemption (projected to be
450 in number) will be permitted to take ESL courses or whether they, like
the SEEK students will be dependent upon tutoring or other support services
that may or may not materialize in a timely fashion. In order to be qualified
for the classification of ESL as defined by CUNY, a student must have taken
at least one semester of high school abroad.[53]
We assume that this is meant to refer only to foreign born non-English
speakers since it could otherwise arguably include even native English
speakers taking a semester abroad or individuals coming from other English
speaking countries. In the past, students were permitted to self-identify
as either "native- or non-native speaker" apparently without regard to
whether or not they were foreign born.[54]
Thus, it is unclear as to students from Puerto Rico. Indeed, the Consultants'
Review states that the proposed Amendment "establishes a dichotomy between
foreign- and native-born students who require ESL programs. We believe
that dichotomy is a false one -- one that should not be embedded in the
proposed Amendment"[55]

The Consultants go on to note that "we cannot help but wonder whether this
false dichotomy reflects the inappropriate conflation of ESL programs with
remediation." [56] We wonder about that too. Moreover, we are
concerned that this definition may fail to include in the ESL exemption
immigrants who took their entire secondary education abroad and, therefore,
do not have a diploma from a Regents certified high school and cannot otherwise
qualify for regular admission to a CUNY senior college.

A Word About the Community
Colleges

The Commission has great respect for the mission of
community colleges and for their vital dual functions which involves technological
and career education, on the one hand, and liberal arts and sciences, including
preparation for transfer to a baccalaureate program, on the other. The
discussion of the education philosophy (or philosophies) behind the community
colleges as a distinct type of institution of higher education is complex
and beyond the scope of this Report.[57]
Suffice it to say, however, that when we express concern for the fact that
students affected by the policy change would be assigned to community colleges
instead of senior colleges, and interpret that result as a diminution of
access, we certainly intend no disrespect for community colleges. As the
Consultants' Review points out, the proposed Amendment will not reduce
access to the CUNY system, (p. 5), and this is accurate as far as
it goes. We are aware that, at least at this stage,[58]
access to the system, as a whole, remains. But, as we discuss below, for
students with aspirations for a baccalaureate degree there are substantial
disadvantages to starting at a community college. There is simply no getting
around the fact that the proposed Amendment will diminish access
to the senior colleges and that enrollment at a senior college has distinct
advantages.

Also, we are concerned that the CUNY community colleges may not be equipped
to handle a large influx of new remedial students. As discussed in detail
below, the community colleges do not have as many full-time faculty members
as do the senior colleges, nor as much funding per student FTE. They currently
enroll less than one-third of the CUNY students (by headcount) while the
senior and hybrid colleges enroll two-thirds. Although the proposed Amendment
will likely increase community college enrollment, it is unclear that they
are prepared in terms of space and personnel to deal with it. According
to one veteran community college professor, the community colleges will
be "drained by efforts expended on remedial instruction of masses of resentful,
demoralized and anxious students, overwhelmed by the arrival of new students
in facilities and classrooms already unequipped to handle the student loads
they have now, [and] pressured by continuing budget constraints to hire
more adjuncts to respond to increased populations." Required to "teach
to the tests," the community colleges would become "the assembly line remedial
mills they are accused of being."[59]

At least equally important is the question of what effect the shift of
resources to remedial instruction will have on the community colleges'
missions: college level academic preparation and technological and career
education. Workforce development, in particular, is likely to be an increasingly
important role for the community colleges in the future[60]
and they should not be seen simply as some sort of remedial dumping ground.

The Likelihood of Completing
a Bachelor's Degree When Beginning at a Community College

Studies show that bachelor's degree aspirants who
begin their higher education at a community college are about half as likely
to achieve a bachelor's degree as otherwise identical students beginning
at senior colleges.[61]
Further, the number of students transferring from community to senior colleges
is rapidly declining nationwide.[62]
The Center for the Study of Community Colleges ("CSCC") conducts an annual
study of community college to senior college transfer rates, analyzing
students who enroll as first-time freshmen in community colleges and have
acquired twelve or more college credits within 4 years. In 1984, the first
year the CSCC reported its findings, the transfer rate to senior colleges
and universities was 23.7%. In 1991, the most recent year for which findings
are available, the rate was 22.1%. The picture is even more bleak for students
of color. "[N]ational research shows that for minority students any delay
in attendance at four-year campuses following high school graduation greatly
reduces the probability that they will complete a bachelor's degree." [63]

At CUNY, as a whole, only 17.5% of the students who entered CUNY community
colleges in 1991 transferred to a CUNY senior college within 6 years. This
figure includes the much higher transfer rates for the hybrid colleges
that offer both associate and baccalaureate degrees. John Jay and the College
of Staten Island ("CSI") have transfer rates of 33% and 29.8% respectively
with the vast majority "transferring" to the senior division of the same
college. At the stand alone community colleges the average transfer rate
is approximately 16.1 %. Bronx Community College students have a transfer
rate of only 11.5%.[64]

In discussing a 1973 policy
enacted by the Trustees to ensure the transfer of credits between the community
colleges and the senior colleges, the Schmidt Report noted:

Although 26 years have passed, CUNY has not yet fully implemented this
policy. Because the 17 colleges view themselves as self-contained institutions,
many of their practices, while in technical compliance with the Trustees'
policy, violate its spirit. Transfer agreements must be negotiated one-by-one
between individual departments, because the faculty fiercely protect their
right to withhold credit for courses taken in other colleges. In addition,
the colleges have bickered over who should shoulder the responsibility
for administering the required certification tests to students wishing
to transfer; some of the senior colleges have even insisted on placing
incoming transfers into remediation even though those students had already
completed remediation and achieved certification at the community college
level.[65]

We often heard senior college faculty and administrators euphemistically
characterize the quality of community college instruction, including remedial
instruction, as "uneven." For example, the PwC II Report[66]
found that "there are differences of opinion among the campuses around
.... [t]he quality of the overall education at CUNY, particularly at the
community college level versus the senior college level. This has led to
difficulty in establishing articulation agreements and the acceptance of
transfer students among the campuses." [67]
For any significant number of students with senior college aspirations
to enroll at community college could simply expand the scope of the problem.

The proposed Amendment does not specify whether or not students sent to
community colleges solely because they require some remedial classes will
be permitted to transfer back to a senior college immediately upon successful
completion of the remediation or whether having started at a community
college they will be required to complete their first two years there.
Either way, we are concerned that the poor prospects for transfer of college
level course credits will present a stumbling block that they would not
have encountered had they been permitted to do their remedial work at a
senior college for which they were otherwise qualified.

The Benefits of Taking
Remediation at a Senior College

In addition to avoiding the need to confront the barriers
to transferring back to a senior college, there are distinct benefits to
students in taking their remedial courses at a senior college. First, the
senior colleges have greater financial resources than do the community
colleges and the quality of instruction cannot be wholly unrelated to the
amount of money spent on it. The CUNY system spends nearly 30% less per
full-time equivalent student ("FTE") on remediation at the community college
level than at the senior college level. In the 1996-97 school year, for
example, senior colleges spent $6,350 per remedial education FTE; meanwhile,
the community colleges spent $4,660.[68]
According to the Schmidt Report supporting document, PricewaterhouseCoopers
I, this disparity in costs-per-FTE results from two factors: "(1) economies
of scale at the community colleges..., and (2) use of lower-paid faculty,
including more adjunct faculty, at the community colleges." [69] To
this list, remedial instructors add a third factor: remedial classes tend
to be considerably larger at community colleges.[70]

The resource gap between community colleges and senior colleges extends
beyond remedial instruction. At CUNY senior colleges (excluding hybrids),
51.0% of the faculty are full-time while only 32.9% of the community college
faculty are full-time.[71]
Senior colleges have a 21.9 student to full-time faculty member ratio while
at the community colleges the student-faculty ratio is 36.3.[72]
CUNY senior colleges spent $8,463 per FTE on "Student/Instruction-Related
Expenditures" ("S/I") (which include instruction, academic support, student
services, institutional support, and plant operation and management)[73]
during the 1997-98 school year, while the community colleges spent $6,553.
System-wide, the S/I cost per FTE has fallen 16% since 1988. This decline
has been more drastic at the senior college level, however, than at the
community college level (25% and 10%, respectively.)[74]

These per-FTE costs, however, include a combination of all expenses such
as plant operation and maintenance. More revealing is a comparison of expenditures
spent exclusively on instruction and program delivery for basic skill remediation
in CUNY's community and senior colleges. This is an area in which it is
difficult to enjoy an economy of scale, since a single teacher can effectively
teach only so many students. In the 1996 Fall semester, CUNY's senior colleges
spent $4,545,000 on direct instruction and program delivery for basic skills
remedial education and community colleges spent $17,091,000. In the same
year, the senior colleges had 2,096 FTEs in Basic Skills classes, and the
community colleges had 10,468. The senior colleges, then, spent $2168 on
instruction and delivery for basic skills remediation per FTE; the community
colleges spent $1,632.[75]
Thus, CUNY's community colleges spend 25% less on remedial instruction
than CUNY senior colleges -- savings that are realized in crowded classrooms,
overworked adjunct professors, and lowered expectations for community college
students.

Second, there are, of course, also intangible benefits to attending a senior
college. Marlene Springer, the President of the College of Staten Island
told us that the senior college environment gives students hope and broadens
their horizons. [76]
This observation comports with the findings of Dr. Alexander W. Astin in
his seminal study, What Matters in College?[77]
He found that:

Viewed as a whole, the many empirical findings from this study seem to
warrant the following general conclusion: the student's peer group is
the single most potent source of influence on growth and development during
the undergraduate years.... When it comes to the student's affective
development, one generalization seem clear: students' values, beliefs,
and aspirations tend to change in the direction of the dominant values,
beliefs and aspiration of the peer group.[78]

The peer group at the community colleges is very often quite different
than that at the senior colleges. In addition to having a major contingent
in vocational and terminal occupational programs, the students at community
colleges,[79]
including CUNY community colleges, tend to be older[80]
and to have more family responsibilities. Serving these students both at
community and senior colleges is, of course, a vitally important function
for CUNY. But Astin's work indicates that traditional first-time freshmen
with senior college aspirations may benefit from having critical mass of
a peer group more like themselves. Indeed, students have told us that because
of perceptions that community colleges have less prestige or family pressure,
they would have been less likely to attend CUNY if they had been required
to fulfill their remedial needs at a community college.[81]
Presumably the Prelude to Success program recognizes these factors and
accordingly is provided at the senior colleges (See pp. 55, et
seq. below).

Impact on Colleges' Institutional
Missions

One of the more troubling aspects of the proposed
changes in remediation at CUNY is the fact that they run roughshod over
the institutional missions and individuality of the constituent colleges
of the system. The campuses have been given no choice in whether or when
to implement the change and little, if any, flexibility in how to implement
it.

The Problem of Inflexibility

The proposed Amendment is too rigid. In regard to remedial coursework,
it does not allow for the necessary flexibility and discretion at individual
campuses having different missions and appealing to the needs and interests
of different segments of the CUNY student population. It does not allow
for different types of remedial needs, such as the student who only
needs one remedial course in algebra.[82]

We agree with the observation
of the Consultants' Review that one,

would expect that the natural complement to such differentiation would
be a practice of flexibility, in which individual colleges would be allowed
to develop their own pathways toward adopting an integrated, more rigorous,
set of standards...[rather than] a strong centralized cast in which basic
rules are being applied unilaterally and everyone is expected to march
to the beat of the same drummer.[83]

The
changes also have important implications for the basic mission of the different
colleges. For example, some senior colleges are not interested in providing
formal remedial coursework (Baruch), while others may wish to minimize
it as much as possible (Hunter, Queens). But the campuses are not being
permitted to adjust the implementation of the changes in the manner most
suited to the needs of their very different student bodies.[84]

Some senior colleges, however, have embraced the role of providing remedial
coursework, which is so often needed by their diverse urban working class
student bodies. They are proud to be able to take the students who through
no fault of their own would be otherwise unable to attend college and educate
them so that they will have at least the opportunity to better themselves
economically. This has been the objective of City College and Lehman College,
for example, and CUNY as a whole, for the last 30 years.

According to the Middle States
Association Team that reviewed Lehman College's accreditation,

Lehman's traditional mission [is] serving as broad a segment of the Bronx
population as is educationally prudent. Without a campus such as Lehman,
the vast majority of residents of the Bronx seeking a college education
would not have an opportunity to complete a four-year degree while at the
same time contending with the family and financial responsibilities many
face outside of the education environment. Budget reductions, however,
have reduced the number of teaching faculty and reduced essential support
programs to a far lower level than is possible to justify. Policy makers
have determined that less prepared students should begin college at two-year
campuses and that four-year campuses need not offer the remedial work many
students from disadvantaged backgrounds need.... Public officials also
have determined that students should pay for a larger share of their education
costs, a significant handicap for individual and families already struggling
to meet day-to-day living expenses. All of these trends have converged
to call into question how long Lehman can continue to carry out its urban
mission in a manner than can be considered relevant to the needs of the
community it serves. [85]
As
we have said, the community colleges, in turn, have traditionally had a
dual mission of both remediation for those who seek to go on to a baccalaureate
program and vocational training for those seeking a certificate or an associate
degree. Without knowing the numbers of students who may ultimately be diverted
into their remedial programs, it is difficult to measure the impact on
their ability to carry out their critically important vocational education
functions.

New York State Education Law 6201, of course, does place a limit on the
mission autonomy of the constituent institutions of CUNY. We were, therefore,
somewhat surprised to hear Dr. Allen Lee Sessoms, the President of Queens
College, say that Queens is really more of a SUNY college, a "regional"
university, than a part of CUNY, with almost half of its undergraduate
student body coming from Nassau and Suffolk Counties rather than from the
City of New York.[86]
Indeed, Queens College draws more heavily from Long Island than from the
four boroughs other than Queens. Whatever the merits such an institution
might have, this clearly does not fit within the statutory mission of CUNY
to serve the New York City urban community and to give access to those
who might otherwise be denied a higher education.[87]
Dr. Sessoms, however, believes that the key to increased funding is to
build a strong connection with the middle class. He said that "the only
people who benefit from open admissions are poor people and poor people
don't vote."

With respect to raising standards, Dr. Sessoms was quite blunt in stating
his view that excellence is largely to be measured by the achievement levels
of the incoming students rather than a value added measure of raising the
achievement of those less prepared at the outset: "[Expletive] in, [expletive]
out. If you take in [expletive] and turn out [expletive] that is slightly
more literate, you're still left with [expletive]." [88] He
said that he was out to build Queens into a great University and the concept
of "value-added" as a measure of excellence would not indicate to him that
Queens is a great University. Dr. Sessoms has thus made explicit what may
well be a large part of the unspoken reasoning behind the proposed Amendment,
at least by some of its more vocal proponents in the political arena, i.e.,
that standards and excellence can only be raised by reducing access to
the urban population for whom CUNY was created and maintained.

Impact at the College
of Staten Island

The College of Staten Island ("CSI") is unique. It
is the only CUNY institution in the borough, it is geographically isolated
compared to others and less accessible by public transportation; has a
different racial and ethnic profile (more whites); and relatively wealthier
students. Most important in this context, it has a truly comprehensive
liberal arts program, in which AA and BA students are fully integrated.[89]
According to its president, Marlene Springer, CSI is the result of a "shotgun
marriage" in 1976 between Staten Island Community College and Richmond
College (an upper-level institution.) For many years the two institutions
remained on two separate campuses with two very different cultures. However,
at least since they have come together geographically at the new Willowbrook
campus, the two have melded into one institution with one faculty and one
set of liberal arts courses. BA candidates and AA candidates attend the
same classes, including remedial classes where necessary, and the corresponding
core college level courses.

The proposed change in remediation will have virtually no effect on CSI.
It is merely a question of bookkeeping. The students taking remedial coursework
have all the benefits of being in a baccalaureate program. The high transfer
rate may perhaps be explained by the fact that these students may remain
at the same institution when they complete their remedial coursework and
move formally over to the baccalaureate program, they need have no concern
about transferring their credits. President Springer estimates that 80%
of their baccalaureate graduates started out in the associate degree program
as "open admission" students. The college also provides both a graduate
degree program and some of the classic vocational education and certificate
programs of a community college. To the extent that the proposed Amendment
is predicated on the theory that the presence of students with remedial
needs reduces the quality of education for the non-remedial students, continuing
the arrangement at CSI would appear to contradict that reasoning.[90]

The Budgetary Impact of
Relocating Remediation

The proposed Amendment and the Schmidt Report each
contain several very ambitious and praiseworthy programs, that have a number
of unstated, but significant, costs. Under any circumstances, most of these
programs would add tremendously to the quality of education at CUNY, and
the Commission fully supports them. If, however, the major changes proposed
by the Trustees are approved, it will become necessary to establish and
nurture them prior to implementing changes in entrance requirements. Because
the success or failure of changes in access to, and remediation at, the
senior colleges is dependent upon the ability to put these programs into
place, it is, therefore, incumbent upon us to note that many of them, if
properly executed, can be quite costly.

We count no fewer than 20 program initiatives in the proposed Amendment,
e.g., "Early identification of and intervention for students in
academic difficulty," "New and Intensified System Initiatives," computer
programs, outreach and recruitment efforts, etc.[91]
Each of these is highly resource-intensive. "Availability of faculty for
academic and career counseling," for example, is a particularly excellent
suggestion, but one that requires full-time faculty, rather than the adjunct
staff which is so highly prevalent at CUNY. It is unclear what these initiatives
will cost or how they will be funded.

As noted earlier, the costs of remediation at CUNY's community colleges
are lower than at the senior colleges. But remediation at the community
college level is also more highly subsidized by state and local funds than
remediation at the senior college level.[92]
Further, 53% of the expenses currently associated with remediation at the
senior college level are not direct instructional costs, but rather administrative,
facilities, and testing expenses.[93]
Presumably, senior colleges will continue to be responsible for many of
these expenses, even as they lose the students associated with these expenses.
It is unclear to us at this time whether removing remedial coursework from
senior colleges would create a net gain or loss for them from state higher
education budgets. A careful analysis is needed of the financial and budgetary
consequences to the senior colleges as a result of the loss of the students
who will now be attending community colleges instead and who may not subsequently
transfer at the completion of their remedial requirements. It is also important
to consider the long-term implications for the City and State of fewer
students in the senior colleges. Fewer potential graduates translates into
fewer future human resources for economic stability and growth.

Contrary to common belief, even at CUNY's senior colleges remedial courses
tend to garner more in revenues than they cost to deliver. In 1996-97,
CUNY senior colleges spent an average of $9,754 per full-time equivalent
("FTE"), but just $6,350 per FTE in remediation. Arthur Hauptman of the
Mayor's Task Force interprets these numbers to suggest that:

remediation may be generating substantial net revenue for the following
reason: To the extent that overall revenues essentially equal overall costs
within a system, if one type of education costs significantly less than
another, it is reasonable to assume that the lower cost activity is subsidizing
the higher cost activity.[94]

Of course, such cross-subsidies are commonplace in academic administration:
high-enrollment introductory sociology courses subsidize low-enrollment
physics labs, law programs frequently subsidize medical education. The
loss of remedial revenues may well hurt senior college budgets and thus
the ability to fund their college level programs. It is unclear how senior
colleges would make up for this revenue loss or whether the community colleges
would enjoy substantial revenue gains under the proposed amendment.

By state law, CUNY community colleges and senior colleges receive government
appropriations according to distinct formulas. While New York City has
no responsibility for funding CUNY senior colleges, it is responsible for
a portion of community college operating and capital costs. By statute,
the City is responsible for one-third of operating costs, unless the community
colleges implement "a program of full opportunity for local residents,"
in which case the city is responsible for four-fifteenths of operating
costs. Further, state statute maintains that tuition and fees are not to
exceed one-third of operating costs.[95]
Recently, however, the legislature has modified the funding scheme, waiving
the tuition cap and allowing the city's responsibilities to shrink, as
long as the city maintains effort.[96]
It is possible that these funding differences might hamper efforts to improve
articulation and cooperation between senior and community colleges.

In addition to questions regarding funding mechanisms, there remains the
perennial problem of inadequate funding of public higher education in the
State of New York. So much of the success of CUNY's plan depends on continued
availability of free summer immersion programs, the proposed but as yet
undefined tutoring and support programs (cited in Chancellor Goldstein's
budget requests) that we remain extremely cautious of reducing revenue
generating support mechanisms (i.e., remedial courses) that currently
exist in favor of undefined and as yet unfunded programs (i.e.,
tutoring centers and support services) that are in any event more costly
to provide. We must ask: When push comes to shove, which programs will
be prioritized in times of fiscal crisis?

Attempts to Mitigate the
Adverse Effects of the New Policy

The impact of the Amendment
will depend upon the success of programs newly designed, some fully in
place but others not yet adequately funded.

With so much at stake, the Commission suggests that the Regents not approve
the implementation of the Amendment until there has been an adequate opportunity
to assess the results of the various programs intended to mitigate the
adverse impact from any elimination of remedial coursework. The Regents'
consultants recognize that the accuracy of the projections upon which they
have based their recommendations cannot be fully assessed until implementation
has actually begun. They recommend that the first phase of the plan be
carefully monitored and that CUNY make appropriate adjustments if the projections
"prove to understate the number of students affected" (p. 3). With all
due respect, the Commission suggests that the Regents' responsibility for
what in effect will be a change in admission standards requires them to
have sufficient information on which to act. Approving the plan and then
putting some type of monitoring in place does not satisfy this charge.

Prelude to Success

Among the other programs the Trustees believe will
ease the transition to the new policy on remediation is the so-called Prelude
to Success, as proposed by Hunter College and the Borough of Manhattan
Community College ("BMCC"). According to the Hunter/BMCC proposal, Prelude
to Success would allow students with minimal remedial needs to be admitted
to Hunter on a conditional basis and fulfill their remedial requirements
in BMCC courses administered on the Hunter campus. The Trustees cite the
Prelude to Success program as a model.[97]
In fact, although the Amendment itself does not mandate that any of the
colleges establish a Prelude to Success program, over the course of this
past summer the program became the centerpiece of CUNY's argument in the
Gomes[98]
litigation and elsewhere, that the proposed Amendment will actually affect
very few students. CUNY administrators have predicted that at least some
of the students who have 1) met the relatively stiff admissions requirements
at the first four senior colleges implementing the changes in January,
2000, and 2) nevertheless have not passed all three placement tests even
after an immersion program, will enter a Prelude to Success program or
some similar program currently being negotiated among CUNY and the relevant
senior and community colleges. Thus, the argument goes, the change in remedial
education policy would have little real impact on them.[99]

Allowing students who are deemed likely to complete their remedial coursework
in one semester to do so on the campus of a senior college, this program
is designed to give students with light remedial needs an opportunity to
satisfy requirements, hopefully without sacrificing eventual senior college
environment. The program would place students in blocks of courses designed
to integrate remedial and college-level material. Further, it is intended
to help students form study skills and social relationships that will help
them learn after they enter into the senior college community.

In effect, the Prelude to Success consists of a community college operating
an extension program on the campus of a senior college. Unlike associate
degree candidates at the hybrid colleges such as the College of Staten
Island, discussed above, the students in Prelude to Success will have community
college faculty and community college courses and course numbers. Because
the community college faculty who teach these courses will have to travel
to a different campus, it seems likely that they will consist mostly, if
not exclusively of adjuncts, rather than full-time tenured faculty. A student
who, for example, chose City College for its engineering program would
not be able to enroll in any of City's engineering courses, even if her
remedial needs were confined to writing, not math. This program appears
to be largely a matter of the location of classrooms. Unfortunately, the
problems with articulation between the community and senior colleges still
remain. Thus although the Prelude to Success students would receive some
special attention, only time will tell whether they will have an easier
time transferring their community college credits to the senior college
than would the students who took the same courses in classrooms at the
community college.

It is important to remember that the Prelude to Success program has never
actually been tried.[100]
First proposed by Hunter and BMCC in response to the Trustees' January,
1999 Resolution, the program will accept its first class this spring semester.[101]
We find it disturbing that under the Trustees' resolution and proposed
Amendment, this new untried concept will be imported into the next five
senior colleges in the fall semester 2000 and the next two in the Fall
2001.[102]
The change in policy will then affect the far greater numbers who traditionally
start in the fall and it will be imposed upon senior colleges (City, Lehman
and York) which currently accept higher numbers and proportions of remedial
students, including students with greater remedial needs, all without first
assessing the impact and the success or failure of ending remedial coursework
at the first four colleges in general, or of the Prelude to Success program
in particular. The first few cohorts of students in the Prelude to Success
will, if nothing else, be affected by being the subjects of an experiment.
There is nothing inherently wrong with experimentation; no innovations
would ever be tried without it. Nevertheless, it is only good educational
practice to run the experiment more than once, and monitor and evaluate
the results, before replicating it widely and with different populations.

CUNY-Based Summer Programs

The Amendment calls for the expansion of summer and
inter-session programs, designed to help incoming students satisfy their
remedial needs before enrolling. These programs are tuition-free, have
been popular and, according to CUNY, quite successful. This summer, 17,000
students attended free University Summer Immersion Program ("USIP") courses,
now offered at all 17 undergraduate campuses.[103]
CUNY notes that 95% of USIP students either complete their remedial work
or advance to the next higher level in the subject for which they took
summer classes.[104]
But, it is estimated, by CUNY, that only about 53% of the students who
attend this program will satisfy all three CSAT's (or presumably the new
tests) in time to actually enroll at the senior colleges at the end of
the program.[105]
Since these are the only free remedial programs that we are aware of, it
must also be noted that these immersion programs require full-time attendance,
making them less accessible to students who need to work full-time, raise
a family, or take care of other external responsibilities. Full-time attendance
may be especially problematic for women.[106]
Fulfillment of CUNY's mission to serve New York City's urban population
should not ignore those realities.

CUNY-Based Year-Round
Immersion Programs

We do not know what the "year-round" immersion programs are. We only know
that CUNY projects that 283 students in need of remedial coursework (after
summer immersion or being exempted from taking the placement tests) will
be enrolled in them instead of Prelude to Success or a community college.
These programs do not currently exist, details regarding these programs
have not yet been publicly disclosed.

College Now

CUNY and a number of its component institutions are
justifiably proud of various programs that they have initiated in high
schools; e.g., College Now. These programs are designed to prepare
students for college work and to help them pass the placement tests before
they arrive at the campuses. CUNY central administrators indicated to us
that they are particularly eager to expand the funding for this program.[107]
Under College Now, the colleges provide outreach to the public high schools,
identifying and testing students in their junior year of high school who
may not pass the CUNY college assessment tests and would therefore require
remediation. Those who fail one or more of the placement tests can work
with CUNY faculty members, on the college campuses, to prepare them to
pass these tests. Started at Kingsborough Community College in 1980 with
a $2.9 million grant from the State, this program now operates at all the
community colleges and 56 of the high schools with a $2 million budget,
including $1.2 million appropriated by the City Council specifically for
it, plus FTE funding based on the number of high school students who attend
the program.[108]
Dr. Louise Mirrer, CUNY Vice Chancellor told us that if CUNY had $10 million,
they could expand the program to all 230 City high schools and reach down
to the junior high schools and educate students even earlier. The Commission
fully supports this funding. There is, however, no indication that this
amount of new money is being made available from any of CUNY's funding
sources.

Other CUNY Initiatives

The proposed Amendment to the Master Plan provides
a list of other programs and initiatives which are proffered as substitutes
for remedial classes in the senior colleges. Some are not really new, having
existed to some extent prior to now, e.g. "expanded collaborative
programs with the New York City Public Schools" and "intensified instruction
for SEEK and ESL students." Others require greater expenditures of already
scarce financial resources, e.g. "improved counseling, advising,
and student support services." Some of these programs both theoretically
already exist and are underfunded, e.g. expanded Writing-Across-the-Curriculum
programs. The Trustees also list some initiatives that may improve enrollment
statistics -- e.g. "intensified recruitment efforts," and "greater
provision for adult and continuing education students" -- but these will
be of no benefit to those recent high school graduates who will require
some remediation. In other words, the programs may help the CUNY institutions
to maintain enrollment, but they will be of little comfort to many of the
students those institutions have traditionally served.

The Amendment also speaks of recruiting students from the top 10% of their
classes and from the specialized high schools. CUNY's long term enrollment
projections may very well hinge to some extent upon the assumption that
this recruitment effort will be successful. It is unclear, however, what
the cost of a heavy recruitment push will be or how CUNY will fund it.
We are concerned about what might be the Amendment's net effect on system
enrollments and funding, particularly at the senior colleges which for
the last 30 years have attracted students in need of extra help to prepare
for college level work, should the recruitment efforts prove to be less
than totally successful.

Finally, the Amendment calls for -- but does not indicate how it will enforce
-- improved articulation between senior colleges and community colleges,
in the hopes of easing the transition for those students required to take
remedial courses at community colleges. The problem of articulation between
community and senior colleges is not unique to CUNY. It is rather a pervasive
and persistent problem nationally. Attempts to resolve it by fiat would
undermine the autonomy of the faculty to set graduation requirements, but
CUNY's track record for articulation agreements is not encouraging. Without
identifying and implementing new transfer provisions, the Trustees' proposed
changes to CUNY's remediation policy would certainly cause greater damage
to the educational opportunities of many students, hoping to enroll in
the CUNY senior colleges. (See pp. 39 et seq. above)

In sum, it is not clear whether
these various ameliorative initiatives will be adequately funded or the
extent to which any of them will in fact relieve the impact on students
of the changes in remediation.

Other Ameliorative Proposals:
Paying for Remediation

The Schmidt Report helpfully discusses how students
pay for remediation (and the rest of their college educations). The two
largest sources of financial aid for CUNY students are the New York State
Tuition Assistance Plan ("TAP") and federal Pell grants. In addition, students
can and often do take out loans to pay tuition. The Schmidt Report points
out that although the Pell legislation allows students to receive federal
aid for up to one year of purely remedial coursework, TAP regulations have
several requirements that make it difficult for post-secondary students
to finance remedial courses. Students are generally limited to four academic
years of study and only full-time, degree students who are taking at least
three college-level credits during the first semester and at least six
college-level credits during each subsequent semester are eligible for
TAP. Students must also maintain a certain level of academic progress as
measured by the successively greater number of courses taken, credits earned
and minimum GPA.[109]
The drawbacks for the CUNY student population are obvious: The most economically
disadvantaged students also tend to be those most in need of pre-college
remedial work.

The Task Force goes on to recommend review and revision of the TAP rules
to make TAP available for remedial courses as well as college-level coursework.
This aid used to be available and was known as Supplemental TAP. The Report
also argues that "New York City and New York State must recognize that
remedial education is an unfortunate necessity that is not going to disappear
in the short run, and the Mayor and the Governor must work together to
identify funds that can be used to finance it.[110] This
Commission fully supports those recommendations.

As noted above, the Schmidt Report had a number of component reports done
by staff or consultants. One of the underlying Rand Corporation reports
goes beyond the main Schmidt Report to recommend that all remedial courses
should be provided free, pointing out that students are currently required
to pay and sometimes take out loans for "services they should have received
for free in K-12 education." [111] This recommendation also
seems eminently reasonable to us.

The Tests - Remediation
and Admissions - A "Moving Target"?

Up to and including the Fall semester of 1999, CUNY
has administered three tests to its incoming students: the Writing Assessment
Test ("WAT"), the Reading Assessment Test ("RAT"), and the Mathematics
Assessment Test ("MAT"). Collectively these exams were known as the College
Skills Assessment Tests ("CSAT's") or sometimes known as Freshman Skills
Assessment Tests ("FSAT's") -- the latter is a particular misnomer since
the tests were given at various stages in a student's career, both for
placement and exit purposes. These tests were used by CUNY colleges to
determine the remedial needs of incoming students. Under terms of the proposed
Amendment as submitted to the Board of Regents, these assessment examinations
would assume a new responsibility. Since the Amendment would deny senior
college admissions to students placed in remedial courses, the Amendment
would reposition the CSAT's as admissions tests.

On September 8, 1999, while the Regents were holding their first public
hearing on the proposed Amendment, the Committee on Academic Policy, Program,
and Research ("CAPPR") of the CUNY Board of Trustees voted to recommend
a change in the testing program. On September 27, the full Board voted
to require that "all colleges use common objective tests reflecting national
norms, and other assessments as deemed necessary, to determine when students
who have been placed in remedial coursework qualify for exit from
remediation,..." [112] The Chancellor, in consultation with
others, is to designate suitable tests to be fully implemented by the Spring
2000 semester. At the Board meeting, Chancellor Goldstein reported that
the administration had decided to continue to use the CUNY CMAT for math,
but had issued a request for proposals to major test companies to get bids
for a reading and writing test.

Although the testing resolution speaks exclusively in terms of "exit" from
remediation, it is apparent that the yet to be identified tests will be
used for at least two additional purposes: 1) placement in remedial coursework
and, as a consequence of such placement, 2) denial of admission to a senior
college. Once again, because of the requirement of the proposed Amendment
to eliminate remedial coursework from the senior colleges, CUNY has conflated
two functions, admissions and remediation placement, which ought to be
separate and distinct and for which no single test can properly serve.
In discussing the new "exit" tests, the chancellor was thus obliged to
explain how these tests will work as part of the admissions process. All
applicants will henceforth be required to take the SAT. Admissions decisions
will be based on a combination (to be specified by each senior college)
of high school grades, SAT scores, Regents' test scores, the number of
college preparatory courses completed, class rank, and possibly AP courses.[113]
This is an excellent plan. It uses multiple criteria and apparently gives
at least some flexibility to the individual senior colleges. But there
is a catch: In order to be relieved of the requirement of taking and passing
the new exit/placement tests, a student will still be required to score
at least 500 each on the Verbal and Math portions of the SAT, a 21 on the
ACT, or a 75 on the relevant Regents exams. Students accepted at a senior
college with lower SAT, ACT, or Regents' scores will now be required to
take and pass the new placement/exit tests in order to actually enroll
at the college that has already "accepted" them. As a practical matter,
therefore, CUNY will set a minimum test score as a requirement for admission
to all its senior colleges, regardless of grades, difficulty of courses
taken, or any other factor which may theoretically figure in determining
admissions.

The CUNY leadership, which in the past had resisted any change from the
CSAT's and defended their use, in reality had no choice but to abandon
these thoroughly discredited tests now. First of all, the Schmidt Report
sharply criticized the CSAT's, unequivocally stating that they "do not
meet generally accepted scientific standards of reliability, validity,
and fairness. The CUNY writing assessment test, in particular, is highly
unreliable." [114] Then on June 7, 1999, in a move that was
ultimately enjoined by Court order,[115]
the Mayor and City Council added a rider to the FY 2000 budget appropriations
providing that no funds would be made available to CUNY unless, by September
30, 1999, the Board of Trustees adopted a resolution to be implemented
in the current academic year, that all community colleges must use "an
objective test, reflecting nationally based standards, to determine when
students who have been placed in remediation programs successfully achieve
college readiness and are prepared to exit from remediation."

Replacing the CSAT's is necessary but insufficient. Without knowing what
the new placement/exit and (realistically) admissions tests are or what
cut score(s) will be, we cannot be entirely sanguine about them. There
are two major problems with this testing scheme. First, it will have the
effect of using one test, standing alone, to make a very high stakes decision:
barring an otherwise qualified student from senior college. Second, these
tests, as well as those used to exempt students from them (i.e.,
the SAT and the ACT) may very well have the effect of disproportionately
excluding low-income students, urban students, minorities, and women from
the senior colleges.[116]

Use of a Test as a Sole
Criterion for a High Stakes Decision

College admissions and testing
professionals universally agree that a test should be used only for the
purpose for which it was designed and validated[117]
and that even a validated test should not be used as the sole deciding
factor in a high-stakes decision, such as college admissions.

[W]e believe that no single factor should be used as the sole criterion
for any important educational decision. No single test can give a complete
picture of an individual, and we urge score users to view a test as simply
one of the many pieces of information available about a student.[118]

The "Standards for Educational
and Psychological Testing" published by the American Educational Research
Association, the American Psychological Association, and the National Council
on Measurement in Education (1985) ("APA Standards") provide:

In elementary or secondary education, a decision or characterization that
will have major impact on a test taker should not automatically be made
on the basis of a single test score.[119]

There is no reason why the same should not be true of higher education
decisions as well. See also, National Association of College Admissions
Counselors Code of Ethics III. A. 3. and 4. (minimum test scores should
not be used as a sole criterion for admission and should be used in conjunction
with other data.)

It is vital that any new test not only be reliable and professionally validated
for the purpose for which it is to be used, i.e., as in effect
an admissions test, but also that CUNY establish a cut score that is meaningful
and reasonable in the circumstances and that the test not be used as a
sole determinant for admissions. The SAT is designed and has been validated
only to predict first-year grades in college, and as noted above, ETS,
the designer and manufacturer of the SAT, recommends that it not be used
as the sole determinant for a high stakes decision.[120]
The same would be true of any standardized placement test ultimately selected
by CUNY to replace the reading and writing CSAT's. If failure to attain
a minimum score on one of these tests, presumably designed and validated
for the purposes of placement in and/or exit from remediation, becomes
a bar to admission to a senior college, that would be a misuse of the test.

Fairness and Standardized
Tests

The use of minimum SAT scores as an exemption from
the placement tests, along with the general use of an as yet unidentified
standardized test to exclude students from senior college illustrates the
problems associated with the use of standardized tests with respect to
the intended beneficiaries of a CUNY education. It is a sad, but undeniable,
fact that scores on standardized tests tend to correlate with parental
income and parental education levels, that on average minorities tend to
score lower than whites, women tend to score lower than men, and people
from urban and rural areas tend to score lower than suburbanites.(Tables
6 to 9 are illustrative.) Obviously, there may be many complicated and
interrelated reasons for this, but the fact remains that CUNY is supposed
to serve the urban poor, people of color, and immigrants. Relying on these
tests to bar entry to a senior college will very likely stratify the student
body of CUNY in a manner inconsistent with its mission. Such heavy reliance
is particularly troubling for a university whose mission includes equality
of access for urban populations (see Table 10) and for institutions
serving students who are frequently the first in their families to attend
college. (See Table 11.)

1999 is the first year in which all New York State students were required
to take Regents examinations to graduate from high school, and the first
year in which the "Mathematics A Regents Examination" is being administered.[121]
These tests have not yet been repeatedly administered to a broad population,
and thus there is no way to gauge their impact on CUNY admissions at this
time.

Table 6.

1999 Average SAT Scores (by race/ethnicity and gender)
for College Bound Seniors were:

Urban and rural students score below average; suburban
students score above average
Source: News from the College Board (Chart 7)

Table 11.
1999 Mean SAT Scores by Highest Level of Parental
Education

Verbal

Math

No High School Diploma
High School Diploma
Associate Degree
Bachelor's Degree
Graduate Degree

413
474
489
525
558

437
476
490
531
563

Source: "News from the College Board" Sept. 1999.

Realistic Cut Scores

CUNY students do fairly well on the SATs, but the suggested cut off score
of 500 on the Verbal portion and 500 on the Math portion would presumably
exclude at least half of the students currently attending even the most
selective senior college in the CUNY system (Baruch). There, the mean total
SAT score of its student body was 1012 in 1998, the most recent year for
which data is available. (The national mean score for all college bound
senior test takers in 1999 was 1017 (See Table 6.). The other senior
colleges had even lower mean SAT scores; the senior college average was
971, with 86.6% of the CUNY senior college population reporting scores.[122]
According to the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES), students
scoring 960 are considered to be "moderately qualified for college." Students
with 1110 are "highly qualified." [123] If the 500/500 cut off
is any indication of the score level to be used in the regular admissions
process,[124]
this means that virtually all CUNY baccalaureate entrants would have to
have performed at or above the national average.

This would make admissions criteria at CUNY's senior colleges higher than
at most SUNY colleges, where mean composite SAT scores cluster in the low
1000s, and at least 25% of the regularly admitted first-time students score
below 1000 on the SAT at 16 of the 24 SUNY schools that require SAT scores
for admission.[125]

CONCLUSIONS and RECOMMENDATIONS
on Remediation

With respect to the removal
of all remedial coursework from the senior colleges as proposed by Trustees
Amendment to the Master Plan, the Commission has come to the following
conclusions:

As a matter of principle, remediation
should not be necessary for traditional 18 year old entering freshmen
at the senior colleges and the elimination of the need for remediation
must be a serious goal.

the feeder schools (be they
public, parochial or private) have the responsibility to prepare those
students who aspire to higher education for college level work.

It is the historic and proper
role of CUNY, as well as its legally mandated mission, to afford the broadest
possible access to the poor and working class urban population of New York
City. This cannot be wished away with mere slogans about standards, nor
can it be, in the City's own self interest, ignored; the economic, social
and political health of New York City depend upon an educated populace.

We have found no persuasive
evidence that it is preferable either for the students (remedial and non-
or post- remedial), for the senior colleges, for CUNY as a whole, or for
the City or New York that all remedial coursework be done by the community
colleges only. [126]

In
sum, we recommend against the Board of Regents approval of the CUNY Trustees
proposed Amendment to the Master Plan. Further, in our view, the various
programs outlined in the proposed Amendment and the recommendations put
forth in the Schmidt Report: to do outreach to the public high schools,
to expand summer immersion programs, and to provide supplementary TAP funds
to remedial students are necessary both to end the need for remedial
education and to raise overall standards and educational opportunities
at CUNY. They should be put in place on a provisional basis, and their
effectiveness monitored.

In the event that the Amendment
is, nevertheless, approved in whole or it part, we recommend that:

Such an important change should
not be undertaken without first putting in place and fully funding
the Trustees' proposed programs and the Schmidt Report recommendations
with respect to TAP, and CUNY should:

allow for flexibility at individual
campuses to make the adjustment based upon their individual missions and
their understanding of the needs of their students;[127]

undertake a system-wide study
of remedial programs, in order to identify and disseminate effective approaches
to remediation;

phase in the changes in a manner
that maximizes fairness to incoming students and allows for orderly planning
by both the students and the colleges; the policy to end remedial coursework
at the senior colleges if enacted, must be implemented in reasonable stages,
allowing for time to assess the impact and success of new programs designed
to minimize student need for remedial courses by the time they enter senior
college;

implement admissions and placement
criteria that are reliable, valid, and fair;

meet the needs of the wide variety
of students seeking a CUNY education including people of color, recent
immigrants with English language deficits, low-income people, those who
must work and/or have family responsibilities, those who are first generation
college attendees, older and other non-traditional students, etc.

permit remedial coursework,
administered by senior colleges, for those students, such as SEEK and ESL
students, admitted to the senior colleges under exceptions to the general
policy in order to give them adequate opportunity to succeed.

Appendix A

Legal Analysis and Standard
of Review

The proposed Amendment to the Master Plan to eliminate
remedial courses from all baccalaureate programs is just that, a proposal.
The responsibility rest with the Board of Regents as to whether it should
be approved. In exercising its independent judgment, the deference given
to the Trustees of CUNY should depend upon the extent to which the Trustees
exercised their duties in reaching their decision. It is black letter law
that Trustees have a duty to inform themselves, prior to making a business
decision, of all material information reasonably available to them. Aronson
v. Lewis, 473 A.2d 805, 812 (Del. 1984). Although the cited case involved
a business corporation, the Trustees standards are no less in a public
context.

The record shows that the Trustees of CUNY, when approving the proposed
Amendment did not have some of the most basic information available to
them affecting their decision.[128]
Nor did they engage in the kind of debate necessary to explore the impact
that their decision would have. It is noteworthy that three of the Trustees
voted against the plan and one abstained.

The Regents' decision should, of course, take cognizance of the legislative
intent that CUNY continue to maintain and expand its commitment to academic
excellence and to the provision of equal access and opportunity for students,
faculty and staff from all racial and ethnic groups and from both sexes.[129]

In addition to its obligations under New York State law, the Board of Regents
should also consider the requirements of federal law, in particular federal
civil rights law. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. 2000(d),
prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin
by any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance. Title
IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, 20 U.S.C. 1681, prohibits discrimination
on the basis of gender in any educational program or activity receiving
federal financial assistance. Both statutes have been held to prohibit
intentional discrimination, but the Supreme Court has also held that, under
regulations promulgated by the United States Department of Education pursuant
to the Titles VI and IX, policies and practices that have disparate effect
or impact on a group protected by statutes are also prohibited.[130]
As discussed in the body of the report, the proposed Amendment will have
disproportionate adverse effect on women and on racial and ethnic minorities.
If that can be shown by a preponderance of the evidence, the new policy
will have to meet the standard of substantial legitimate justification.[131]
If the policy meets that standard, it may still violate the law if there
exists a comparable effective alternative practice which would result in
less disproportionality, or if the proffered justification is a pretext
for discrimination.[132]

This requirement applies both to the proposed new policy as a whole, as
well as to its component parts, i.e., it applies to the policy decision
to prohibit remedial instruction for anyone enrolled in a baccalaureate
program, and to the tests used to make this selection. In the context of
testing, it means that if a test has disparate impact on the basis of race,
national origin, or gender it must have a substantial educational justification
or it is a violation of Title VI or Title IX. To meet the substantial legitimate
justification standard for a high stakes educational test requires a showing
that the test is valid and reliable for the purpose for which it is being
used. If such a showing is made, the use of the test may nonetheless be
impermissible if a less discriminatory practical alternative will serve
the educational purpose as well.[133]

In its draft resource guide, the Office of Civil Rights of the U.S. Department
of Education has stated unequivocally that "[w]here a test is being used
as the sole or principal criterion for making educational decisions and
where it was clearly not designed to be used as such, there is no basis
upon which to conclude that the test is educationally necessary. [134]
Although the question of what test(s) will be used for the purposes of
placement in remediation is still undecided, the legal implications are
clear. To the extent that any placement/exit test that has disparate impact
is to be used standing alone to bar students from admission to a
senior college, it may violate federal civil rights law. The Board of Regents
is obligated to take this into account.

As to the policy as a whole, there is, of course substantial evidence that
minorities and women will be disproportionately affected. First, they will
be barred from baccalaureate programs at a higher rate. Equally damaging
for many young people covered by the SEEK and ESL exemptions (the vast
majority of whom are members of racial and ethnic minorities), they will
be enrolled in baccalaureate programs at senior colleges but will be denied
the remedial courses they will need in order to succeed and prosper in
college.

Furthermore, since the Board of Regents has jurisdiction over the educational
policies and practices of all higher education institutions in New York
State, it must also be mindful of the fact that a majority of senior colleges
in the state, in particular, all the senior institutions in SUNY, continue
to provide remedial instruction. Thus, if the Regents approve the proposed
Amendment to the Master Plan and remove all remedial classes from the senior
colleges of CUNY, a majority of whose students are members of racial and
ethnic minorities, they may be sanctioning a state policy that provides
remedial education to a largely white senior college populations around
the state while at the same time denying it to a largely minority student
population in New York City. This may, in and of itself, be a violation
of Title VI.

Appendix B

Measures of Excellence

The much discussed college ratings of publications
such as U.S. News & World Report are based upon criteria which
heavily disadvantage CUNY. In addition to the SAT scores of incoming freshmen,
they look to student/faculty ratios, percent of faculty who are full-time,
and this year "U.S. News tweaked its methodology, putting more emphasis
on how much a school spends on its students. That gave Caltech [ranked
the number one university this year] " which spends $192,000 annually per
student to educate its undergrads in state-of-the-art labs -- a big boost."
[135] Significantly, "U.S. News acknowledges that its rankings
include no criteria for what is actually taught at these schools, nothing
on curriculum or what students actually get out of their education... The
magazine's ability to consider such factors as how well a college trains
its graduates for their particular field is constrained," explains Alvin
Sanoff, who was managing editor of the survey until last year, "by the
paucity of data on what happens to a college's graduates after they leave
their alma mater." [136]

To the extent that CUNY or
it's supporters have been able to assemble information on the success of
its graduates the picture is encouraging and demonstrates that CUNY is
indeed succeeding by a "value added" standard.

The credentials, in particular the SAT scores of in coming freshmen, play
an inordinately large role in computing of the "rank" accorded to colleges
and universities by publications such as U.S. News and World Report
and the Princeton Review's Best 331 Colleges as well as by common
understanding of what constitutes a prestigious and therefore excellent
school. But the Mayor's Task Force points to another, more appropriate
measure for CUNY:

In a complex system such as CUNY, where the goals and preparation levels
of incoming students vary widely from college to college, performance standards
must attempt to measure the value added by the college, accounting
for baseline differences in student populations and reflecting appropriate
differences in the academic missions of CUNY institutions. [137]

*****

Accrediting agencies have often had high praise for CUNY institutions.
Some samples follow. "Report to the Faculty, Administration, Trustees,
Students of Brooklyn College" Commission on Higher Education of the Middle
States Association of Colleges and Schools, 1999:

"Brooklyn College's] identity
as a rigorous and demanding institution instills a sense of pride in its
students and a recognition that the College is moving them beyond what,
for a substantial number of students, has been inadequate high school academic
preparation an life in essentially segregated Brooklyn neighborhoods."

Faculty: "the Team found the
Brooklyn College full-time faculty of 487 and part-time faculty of 493
to be a well credentialed and motivated group of professional men and women,
committed to the intellectual growth and professional development of their
students." (But, the report points out, the faculty's average age is 55,
it is missing a "middle generation" of scholars.)

****

Report to the Faculty, Administration,
Trustees, Students of the City College of New York -- Commission on Higher
Education of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools, 1998:

"City College is one of the
grand names in the history of American higher Education. It has been a
privilege for this [Middle States Association] Team to visit the campus.
Not only because of history, bit because this is a truly distinguished
faculty, major contributors to scholarship and to mankind's fund of knowledge,
and faculty broadly committed to its students -- the CCNY student of today.
We found a student body that inspires our respect and admiration: students
who work, who have family responsibilities, who must often master a new
language, who succeed in surprising measure and go on to great things."

****

"Report to the Faculty, Administration,
Trustees, Students of Hunter College" Commission on Higher Education of
the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools, 1997:

"The Team believes that overall
and within the limitations imposed by resource limitation, Hunter is doing
an outstanding job in providing access to high quality education to its
multifaceted student body coming from varied backgrounds of ethnicity,
culture, age, experience and economic level. Recent graduates give overwhelmingly
positive responses in describing their experiences at Hunter: they felt
challenged by the experience, they rate is highly and they would choose
Hunter again. In addition, Hunter's success in attracting external funding
is evidence that it is reaching its goal as a research institution."

****

"Report to the Faculty, Administration,
Trustees, Students of Lehman College" Commission on Higher Education of
the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools, 1999:

"Despite its inadequate resource
base, the College is carrying out many aspects of its mission very effectively.
Lehman's faculty is well qualified and highly regarded by the student body.
It takes its arts and science tradition seriously and is in the process
of updating its general education program to ensure that it remains relevant
and an integral part of the entire campus program."

****

"Report to the Faculty, Administration,
Trustees, Students of New York City Technical College" Commission on Higher
Education of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools, 1997:

"The incredible work ethic of
both the full-time and administration and faculty is very impressive. In
spite of a number of significant budget challenges in the past few years
which resulted in the reduction of staff, the College continues to do everything
possible to sustain services, teaching, and learning for its students with
less people."

"Students have high expectations
they will get good jobs when they graduate. The high pass licensure rate
(77%-100%) in certain required technical programs as well as high career
placement of graduates in most departments seems to suggest the students'
perceptions are accurate."(3)

****

"Report to the Faculty, Administration,
Trustees, Students of Queens College" Commission on Higher Education of
the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools, 1995:

"The team has been impressed
by the continued high quality of many Arts and Humanities academic programs
at Queens College, particularly in the face of serious reductions in faculty
lines and academic supports." "The team believes this College has the potential
for greatness to which it aspires."

[
] 2Amendment to the Master Plan of the City University of
New York, filed with the Board of Regents, June 28,1999, ("Amendment").
Return to Text

[
] 3 Both the Schmidt Report and its underlying reports will
be referred to throughout this document. The PricewaterhouseCoopers Reports
will be referred to as "PwC I," PwC II," and PwC III," respectively. Return
to Text

[
] 4 The work of the Commission was funded by a grant from
the New York Community Trust. Return to Text

[
] 5 "6201. 3: "The legislature's intent is that the city university
be supported as an independent and integrated system of higher education
on the assumption that the university will continue to maintain and expand
its commitment to academic excellence and to the provision of equal access
and opportunity for students, faculty and staff from all ethnic and racial
groups and from both sexes." ?6201. 5: "Only the strongest commitment to
the special needs of an urban constituency justifies the legislature's
support of an independent and unique structure for the university." Return
to Text

[
] 6 See e.g., Herman Badillo, "Why CUNY Needs Standardized
Tests," New York Post, September 19, 1999; and Heather MacDonald
"Downward Mobility: The Failure of Open Admissions at City University,"
City Journal, Summer, 1994 et al. Return to Text

[
] 10 New York State ranks 42 and 46 in rankings of state higher
education appropriations per capita and per $1000 income, respectively,
according to Grapevine: The National Database of Tax Support for Higher
Education. In 1998-99, the state spent $166.91 per person on higher education,
compared to California's $223.36 and New Mexico's $297.79.(pp. 13,16) Return
to Text

[
] 14 See pp.15, 35, et sec below for a description
of the SEEK and ESL programs and their exemption from the policy with respect
to admissions to senior college, but not with respect to the denial of
remedial courses. Return to Text

[
] 15 Baruch, Brooklyn, City, Hunter, Lehman, Queens and York
and bachelor's programs at John Jay, Medgar Evers, New York City Technical,
and the College of Staten Island. Return to Text

[
] 16 Admissions standards at CUNY colleges have varied a great
deal over the years. In 1924, the Free Academy and the municipal college
system agreed to base admission solely on a minimum high school GPA. Between
1924 and the implementation of open admissions in 1970, that minimum varied
from 75 to the low 90s, according to Sally Renfro and Allison Armour-Garb's
"Open Admissions and Remedial Education at the City University of New York"
(prepared for the Mayor's Task Force, April, 1999, pp. 13-14.) Currently
at Queens College, one of the system's most selective schools, the base
high school grade point average for admissions purposes is 85 (Approved
Queens College Freshman Admissions Criteria, December 15, 1998.) Return
to Text

[
] 17 Under the newly adopted policy, CUNY will replace its
own reading and writing tests with "objective tests reflecting national
norms, and other assessments as deemed necessary" for the purpose of deciding
placement in and exit from remedial coursework, Resolution of the Board
of Trustees, passed September 27, 1999. In other respects the proposed
Amendment apparently maintains the status quo. Return to Text

[
] 21 In the past, CUNY has not required that prospective students
submit SAT scores to be considered for admission. Thus, 86.6% of the first-time
baccalaureate freshmen enrolling in CUNY's senior colleges submitted SAT
scores in 1998 (Patricia Hassett, "Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) Scores
Fall 1998 v. Fall 1997," August 17, 1999 Memo to Interim Chancellor Kimmich.)
CUNY has arranged for the College Board to administer the SAT without cost
at four CUNY institutions with the scores to be reported only to CUNY.
Return to Text

[
] 22 "Proposed Admissions Process: CUNY's Baccalaureate Programs."
This is a flow chart distributed to the Board of Trustees by Chancellor
Goldstein on September 27, 1999 in support of the resolution changing the
remediation placement and exit tests. Hereinafter "Admissions Flow Chart."
See Exhibit 1. Return to Text

[
] 23 The SEEK program ("Search for Education, Elevation and
Knowledge") is mandated at CUNY by Education Law ? 6452. CUNY is required
to provide (and receives separate specifically earmarked funding for) special
programs for students who, inter alia, are "economically and educationally
disadvantaged." The legislation requires that these students receive screening,
testing, counseling, tutoring, and other assistance and contemplates that
they will, but does not require that they do, receive "remedial courses,
developmental and compensatory courses, and summer classes." ? 6452(4)(a)(ii).
By definition, therefore, these are students who would not normally qualify
for admission to a senior college but are to admitted nonetheless. See
Exhibit 2. Return to Text

[
] 24 For a discussion of the definition of ESL students in
this context, see p. 35, below. Return to Text

[
] 25 Admissions Flow Chart, n. 2. The SEEK (Search for Education,
Elevation and Knowledge) program was established by the New York State
Legislature in 1966. Under to the statute (N.Y. Education Law ?6452), CUNY
is required to provide admissions and special assistance for "economically
and educationally disadvantaged" students. Return to Text

[
] 26 See, The City University of New York: 2000-2001
Budget Request: A Commitment to Quality, approved by the Board of Trustees
Committee on Fiscal Affairs, Oct. 5, 1999. Return to Text

[
] 32 Prior to the Board of Trustees action, Baruch had already
stopped offering remedial classes per se, but continued to admit
students who met their relatively stringent admissions criteria but who
nevertheless were deemed to require some remediation. Instead of formal
classes, Baruch provided a privately funded tutoring center to help these
students with their college level work. Return to Text

[
] 34 Students accepted to a Florida senior college, but placed
in remedial courses, can enroll in the senior college, even as they take
remedial courses from community colleges. These students are not removed
from the senior college, they are not required to change their enrollment
status, and they are not required to transfer from community college to
senior college once they have completed their remedial work. Ibid. Return
to Text

[
] 41 "Projected Outcomes of First-time Freshmen Admitted to
CUNY Senior Colleges In Fall of First Year Under the January 25 Policy
on Remediation." CUNY Office of Institutional Research, July 4, 1999. See
Exhibit 3. Return to Text

[
] 42 "Projected Outcomes of First-time Freshmen Admitted to
CUNY Senior Colleges In Fall of First Year Under the January 25 Policy
on Remediation (Revised Estimate)." CUNY Office of Institutional Research,
September 1, 1999. See Exhibit 4. Return to Text

[
] 45 This estimate will be further complicated by the subsequent
resolution to use a new test for reading and writing placement. Return
to Text

[
] 46 According to CUNY's Office of Institutional Research
and Analysis's "Performance of First-time Freshmen on the CUNY Skills Assessment
Tests: First-time Freshmen Regularly Admitted to Baccalaureate Programs,
Fall 1999," October 6, 1999, 79.3% of CUNY's first-time freshmen are projected
to have passed all three CSAT's by the beginning of the current semester.
This document is, however, still a projection informed by many of the assumptions
that underlie CUNY's early projections, and using preliminary data that
is not yet reliable. Return to Text

[
] 47 CUNY Office of Institutional Research and Analysis projections
included in the Trustee's Amendment to the Master Plan, prepared June 24,
1999. Return to Text

[
] 57 Seegenerally, Arthur M.,Cohen and Florence
B. Brawer, The American Community College,(3rd Edition), Jossey-Bass,
Inc, San Francisco, 1996; Dale Parnell, The Neglected Minority,
Community College Press, Washington D.C., 1985; Maurice D. Weidenthal,,
Who Cares About the Inner City? The Community College Response to Urban
America, Association of Community and Junior Colleges, National Center
for Higher Education, Washington, D.C. 1989. Return to Text

[
] 58 Any out-sourcing of remediation to private providers
would, of course, dramatically reduce access to the system. Return to
Text

[
] 60 For a discussion of the importance of this role, seeNew York State's Community Colleges: Cost-Effective Engines of Educational
Access and Economic Development, Report of State Comptroller H. Carl
McCall, March, 1999. Return to Text

[
] 62Alexander Astin, What Matters in College? The Josey-Bass
Higher and Adult Education Series (1993), at xiv. Return to Text

[
] 63"Report to the Faculty, Administration, Trustees, Students
of Lehman College" Commission on Higher Education of the Middle States
Association of Colleges and Schools, 1999, pp.1-2. Return to Text

[
] 65 Schmidt Report, p. 82. See also the underlying
Rand Corporation report, Gill, Brian P. Governance of the City University
of New York: A System at Odds with Itself, which states that "In some
cases it is easier for a CUNY community college graduate to transfer to
a 4-year college outside of CUNY than to another CUNY college." (pp. 14-15.)
Return to Text

[
] 66PricewaterhouseCoopers, "Report II: Planning and Budgeting
at the City University of New York," December 1998. Return to Text

[
] 81 Interviews held at Brooklyn College, July 8, 1999 with
Brooklyn College SEEK students. Return to Text

[
] 82 In this regard, the findings presented by Clifford Adelman,
Senior Research Analyst at the U.S. Department of Education, to the Board
of Regents on October 19, 1999 are particularly relevant. In studying transcripts
of students from urban areas in the Mid-Atlantic region, Dr. Adelman found
that students with remedial reading needs are more likely to graduate if
they take remedial courses at community colleges, but other students, particularly
those who are not English language dominant and have remedial writing needs,
are better served by senior colleges. In its one-size-fits-all approach,
the proposed Amendment makes it impossible for individual colleges to tailor
its remedial treatments to students' unique needs. Return to Text

[
] 84 The Consultants' Review, despite its endorsement of the
first phase of the proposed Amendment is quite critical of this aspect
of the plan, pp.12-13. Return to Text

[
] 85"Report to the Faculty, Administration, Trustees, Students
of Lehman College" Commission on Higher Education of the Middle States
Association of Colleges and Schools, 1999, p. 1-2. Return to Text

[
] 86 Interview with Allen Lee Sessoms, September 21, 1999.
He made the same assertions at the Regents hearing on September 8, 1999.
Return to Text

[
] 87 "Only the strongest commitment to the special needs of
an urban constituency justified the legislature's support of an independent
and unique structure for the university." New York State Education Law
? 6201. 5. Return to Text

[
] 89 CUNY's other hybrid institutions, John Jay College, Medgar
Evers College, and New York City Technical College, also integrate AA and
BA students but, unlike CSI, neither John Jay nor New York Tech is primarily
a general liberal arts college. Return to Text

[
] 90 In this regard, it is interesting to note that Deena
New, the CSI student who testified in favor of the Amendment at the Regents'
hearing on October 19, 1999, stated that she had never been in a class
with remedial students. This seems unlikely, given the high number of students
at CSI who enter with some type of remedial needs. She also noted that
her classes were very challenging. This may indicate that the issue of
having students with mixed abilities and preparation levels was dealt with
in some satisfactory way. Return to Text

[
] 92 State aid accounts for 28% of remedial revenues at senior
colleges. At community colleges, the state funds 24% of the remedial budget
and the city funds 12%, for a total of 36% of remedial funding from government
aid. PwC I, p. 33. Return to Text

[
] 98 Gomes v. Board of Trustees of CUNY (Supreme Court
of New York, County of New York, Index No. 121848/98 IAS Part 6, Wilk,
J.). Return to Text

[
] 99 In his statement to the Board of Regents on October 19,
1999, Chancellor Goldstein made this argument, saying that the Prelude
to Success is a "creative and inspiring program" and "nothing more than
the strict enforcement of an articulation agreement between community and
senior colleges." Return to Text

[
] 100 The program in Florida is similar in that it has community
college faculty teaching remedial courses at senior college campuses. However,
the students enrolled in these courses take senior college non-remedial
courses taught by senior college faculty at the same time. Florida Department
of Education, Readiness for Postsecondary Education 1997-98. April
1999. Return to Text

[
] 102 Since three of the five second phase colleges, College
of Staten Island, John Jay College, and New York City Technical College,
are hybrids the major impact will be felt at the City College and Lehman
College which have only baccalaureate programs. The final phase involves
one hybrid, Medgar Evers (which actually has had very few baccalaureate
students to begin with) and one senior college, York. Return to Text

[
] 103"Record-Breaking Number of Students Sign Up This Year
for CUNY's Summer Skills Immersion Program." CUNY Office of University
Relations, July 13, 1999. Return to Text

[
] 113 Admissions Flow Chart (Exhibit 1) and remarks of Chancellor
Goldstein at the September 27, 1999, meeting of the Board of Trustees.
Chancellor Goldstein stressed that the admissions decisions should not
be based on any single criterion. Return to Text

[
] 117 Seee.g., National Association of College
Admissions Counselors ("NACAC") Statement of Principles of Good Practices,
(Revised Oct., 1998) Section III. A. 1. (test scores are to be used "discretely
and for the purposes that they are appropriate and validated.") Return
to Text

[
] 126There may be some financial benefit to the community
colleges, but it would be a the cost of becoming "remediation mills" and
would likely distract from their other missions. Return to Text

[
] 127 It is noteworthy that even Baruch College, which eschewed
all formal remedial classes prior to the Trustees' initiative, has accomplished
this transition (and would, according to Interim President Lois Cronholm,
prefer to continue) by enrolling students who meet their relatively stringent
admissions criteria, but who nonetheless fail one or more of the placements
tests, by providing them access to the tutoring center for help with their
college-level coursework. Return to Text

[
] 128 Minutes of the meeting of the Board of Trustees, June
28, 1999. Return to Text

[
] 133 Ibid. See also Memorandum from the Attorney General
for the Heads of Departments and Agencies that Provide Federal Financial
Assistance, "Use of Disparate Impact Standard in Administrative Regulations
Under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act," July 14, 1994, attached hereto
as Exhibit 16. Return to Text

O. Peter Sherwood, former New York
City Corporation Counsel; former Solicitor General of the State of New
York; former Visiting Professor, CUNY Law School; graduate
of Brooklyn College, CUNY.

The Staff of the Commission:

Special Counsel: Isabelle Katz Pinzler,
former Acting (and Deputy) Assistant Attorney General in charge of the
Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, former Director,
ACLU Women's Rights Project.

Research Associate: Thurston A. Domina,
formerly researcher at University Business.

The work of the Commission on the Future
of CUNY was made possible by a grant from the New York Community Trust.

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Mirella Affron, Provost and Vice President
for Academic Affairs, College of Staten Island
Octavia Allen, SEEK program graduate,
Brooklyn College
Anonymous, Adjunct Writing Instructor,
various campuses, City University of New York
Eija Ayravainen, Assistant Provost of
Undergraduate Studies, Hunter College
Herman Badillo, Chair, Board of Trustees,
City University of New York
Lenore Beaky, Professor of English, LaGuardia
Community College
Martha Bell, Chair, Department of Education
Services, Brooklyn College
Michael Benjamin, Legislative Director,
City Councilman Adolfo Carrion, Jr.
Noah Berg, Student, City College of New
York
Alecia Blackwood, Student, City College
of New York
Brown, Roscoe, President emeritus,
Bronx Community College, Co-chair, Friends of CUNY
David Caputo, President, Hunter College
Hakyz Chacon, SEEK program graduate, Brooklyn
College
Lori Cohen, Associate Director of Admissions,
Queens College
Jonathan R. Cole, Provost and Dean of
Faculties, Columbia University
Jason Compton, Student, City College of
New York
Sandi E. Cooper, Professor of History,
College of Staten Island and CUNY Graduate School and University Center,
former President, University Faculty Senate
William Crain, Professor of Psychology,
City College of New York
Lois Cronholm, former Interim President,
Baruch College
David Crook, Office of Institutional Research
and Analysis, City University of New York
Jane Denkensohn, Special Assistant to
the President – Legal Affairs, Queens College
Rafael Dominguez, Student, City College
of New York
Margarata Eguizbal, SEEK program graduate,
Brooklyn College
Patricia Hassett, Deputy Vice Chancellor,
City University of New York
Jay Hershenson, Vice Chancellor for University
Affairs, City University of New York
Briana Irizarry, Student, City College
of New York
Matthew Goldstein, Chancellor, City University
of New York
Meisha Holmes, SEEK program graduate,
Brooklyn College
Edison O. Jackson, President, Medgar Evers
College
Sharlene Jackson, Ph.D. Candidate, City
College of New York
Zoya Khalfin, SEEK program graduate, Brooklyn
College
David Lavin, Professor of Sociology,
Lehman College and the Graduate School and University Center
Richard Lawrence, Student, City College
of New York
Mike Luciano, Student, City College of
New York
Cecelia McCall, Professor of English,
Baruch College, Vice-President University Faculty Senate
Kate McReynolds, Ph.D. Candidate, City
College of New York
Louise Mirrer, Vice Chancellor for Academic
Affairs, City University of New York
Roy Moskowitz, Acting Vice Chancellor
for Legal Relations, City University of New York
Sussana Nayshuler, SEEK program graduate,
Brooklyn College
Patricia O'Connor, Associate Provost,
Queens College
Pauline Pavon, Student, City College of
New York
Ebony Robinson, Student, City College
of New York
Ydanis Rodriguez, Coordinator, Dominicanos
2000, City College of New York
Hannah Seifu-Teferra, Student, City College
of New York
Allen Lee Sessoms, President, Queens College
Joshua Smith, Director, Center for
Urban Community College Leadership, New York University
David Speidel, Provost, Queens College
Marlene Springer, President, College of
Staten Island
Pete Stafford, Student, City College of
New York
Roger Sugarman, Associate Director
for Research and Accountability, Kentucky Council on Higher Education
Sharell Young, SEEK program graduate,
Brooklyn College